Former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle is back in Los Angeles for a pretrial hearing in his case, in which he's accused of murdering unarmed passenger Oscar Grant III on Jan. 1, 2009.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ronald Perry will hear arguments in the L.A. County Superior Court on two motions filed on Mehserle's behalf by his lawyer, Michael Rains.
One motion seeks to have Mehserle's bail lowered and the other seeks to have the Alameda County District Attorney's Office removed from the case for allegedly conspiring to violate Mehserle's Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
Mehserle, 28, who is free on $3 million bail, is charged in connection with the shooting death of Grant, a 22-year-old Hayward man, on the platform of the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland shortly after 2 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2009.
Mehserle, who resigned a week after the incident because he didn't want to cooperate with BART's internal investigation, and other officers were responding to reports that there was a fight on a train. Friends of Grant who were with him at the time have given depositions stating that Grant was one of the people involved in the fight.
Rains has admitted that Mehserle shot and killed Grant but claims that the shooting was accidental because Mehserle meant to use his Taser stun gun on Grant but fired his gun by mistake.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Morris Jacobson ruled in October that Mehserle's trial should be moved out of the county because the large amount of publicity the case has received jeopardized his chances of getting a fair trial locally.
Jacobson selected Los Angeles County as the new venue and California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George chose Perry to preside over the case.
Although Rains filed his motions on Jan. 26, Perry has refused to make them public so far, just as Jacobson blocked Mehserle's court file from the press and the public.
Bay City News
