Defendant rips judge in Ghost Ship case

years in county jail and Harris to get six years.

With time served and credit for good conduct, Almena would have been released in 3½ years and Harris in less than two years.

In July, Jacobson appeared to accept the plea bargain. He spent half an hour reading the criminal charges corresponding to each of the 36 victims. After every “no contest” declaration from Almena and Harris, Jacobson replied, “I will accept that plea and find you guilty of that charge.”

But for reasons not yet known publicly, Jacobson was unable to preside over the sentencing hearing Aug. 9 and 10, and Cramer stepped back in.

Over two days, relatives and friends of the victims described in excruciating detail the trauma they experienced in the months since the fire, which broke out during an electronic music party. Some parents spoke of seeing the burned remains of their children, and others talked about the frantic searches they conducted to find their missing loved ones.

Most of those who gave statements in court blasted the plea deal as a token punishment.

Cramer said he was moved. The judge rejected the plea agreement for Almena, master tenant of the warehouse artist collective, saying he had not shown true remorse or taken full responsibility for his actions. His side of the bargain was part of a “package deal” with Harris, so both halves of the deal were tossed aside.

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley and her prosecutors on the case have since said they will no longer entertain further plea deal talks. They asked for a jury trial to begin right away.

During an exchange with a lawyer leading up to the rejection of the plea deal, Cramer appeared to say that he, too, had lost a child. To Almena’s defense attorneys — one of whom “nearly fell off his chair” after hearing the remark — the judge’s background amounted to an undisclosed conflict of interest, the Monday filing said.

“Judge Cramer would naturally identify with the victims’ family grief, having himself experienced it,” the brief says. “Such experience created a conscious or unconscious bias in favor of the demands of the families.”

The defense team also says that Cramer had indicated to the attorneys, on three occasions, that he was prepared to accept the plea deal. By denying the agreement, the lawyers said, Cramer broke his promise.

Almena “feels that Judge Cramer ‘cheated’ him out of his expected sentence,” they wrote.

“Had Judge Cramer told defense counsel that he was undecided as to whether or not he would accept the plea agreement, or that he would wait and decide after victim impact statements, or that he was leaning towards rejection of it, defense counsel would not have accepted the substitute Judge Cramer,” the filing says.

The motion is expected to be argued in front of a third judge — not Cramer or Jacobson — when it’s heard in November.