Murder conviction overturned; court cites failure to instruct jury on manslaughter laws

RICHMOND >> In what has become a trend for Contra Costa County in the second half of 2021, a state appellate court has reversed another murder conviction, this time citing the trial judge’s failure to instruct jurors on voluntary manslaughter laws.

Thadeus Colley, 45, was convicted two years ago of murdering his cousin, 42-year-old Jamaa Anderson, in a 2018 shooting in Richmond. Colley was sentenced to life in prison; he began serving his sentence at Mule Creek State Prison, but was transferred to the county jail last week to await a second trial.

Colley won his appeal on the grounds that Superior Court Judge Laurel Brady failed to instruct jurors on the laws surrounding what’s known as imperfect self defense — when someone uses too much force in a violent struggle where less extreme self-defense may have been justified. In this case, Colley and Anderson got into a fight over an iPad outside of a Richmond home before the shooting, according to witness testimony.

“On these facts, we conclude there is a reasonable probability a properly instructed jury would have concluded there was a reasonable doubt as to whether defendant acted with malice,” Presiding Justice Alison M. Tucher wrote in the opinion, which was signed by two other appeals court judges.

Prosecutors are expecting to re-try Colley, but will review the case first, like they do whenever a conviction is reversed, according to the head of the district attorney’s homicide unit.

Colley’s conviction was one of six murder or attempted murder cases in Contra Costa to be overturned by the First District Appellate Court since last July. It started with the reversal of Sherill Smothers’ conviction for murdering his ex-girlfriend in Richmond 38 years ago, based on Smothers’ attorney not presenting jurors with DNA evidence that may have vindicated his client.

In August, the court reversed a 2009 murder conviction and death sentence against Edward Wycoff, who stabbed his sister and brother-in-law to death in 2006, in El Cerrito. The court ruled the justice system failed to act on obvious signs that Wycoff was mentally ill.

Last September, the court reversed double murder convictions for three reputed San Francisco gang members, citing deputy district attorney Melissa Smith’s “improper” excusal of a grand juror who voiced support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Smith has since left the Contra Costa District Attorney’s office but works as a prosecutor in another California county.

In October, the court upheld a murder conviction for Ignacio Sanchez-Gomez — a reputed gang member convicted of killing a man for wearing rival gang colors — but dismissed four attempted murder counts based on the jury hearing a “legally erroneous” theory that said four other people who were standing by the victim were in the shooter’s “kill zone.” Similarly, in an Aug. 16 decision, the court reversed one of four attempted murder convictions that relied on the kill zone theory, against Kamani Stelly, in a 2016 Antioch shooting.