Ghost Ship trial: Max Harris walks out of jail after acquittal; Derick Almena remains jailed after mistrial in his case
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These two were certainly irresponsible and negligent civillians, but the prosecution was to provide fall guys to cover for the criminally negligent professional San Francisco Government Code inspectors, Fire inspectors, and Police who ignored this firetrap for years.
Sorry, that should read Oakland City Government.
They should have sued the city of Oakland as they were full aware that this building was a disaster waiting to happen. Instead, like most city bureaucrats, they sat on their asses and did nothing. Only thing their good at is finding ways to extract another nickel from folks like you and I.
A lot of people in this area are upset at the verdicts.
There is talk of a retrial for Almena, since 10 of the 12 jurors found him guilty. The actual owner of that warehouse, Chor Ng, has never been convicted, never even been charged for criminal negligence of city safety codes. Nobody seems to know why.
Now, they get a taste of how the entire state felt last week when Kate Steinle’s illegal alien killer had his conviction overturned.
Exactly, the local authorities knew about this fire trap and blatant building codes, fire codes, zoning etc code violations for a long time, and apparently visited the place multiple times, and did absolutely nothing.
But o my god, one shall NEVER hold a government official accountable...
In fact, next they will want more money from taxes to be sure it never happens again.
Oakland juries are not known for brainpower. That being said I agree 100% with your analysis. The jury probably felt it was unfair to lay 100% of the blame on these numskulls when many others (city, landlord, Oakland PD and fire) were negligent. Personally I see no loss to society from imprisoning these clowns until they are senior but maybe cheaper just to kick them loose and let them OD within a year.