A 17-year-old Oakland boy charged with aggravated mayhem and assault for allegedly setting another teen's skirt on fire on an AC Transit bus last year is prepared to enter a plea bargain, his lawyer said.
After a brief hearing Friday morning for Richard Thomas, who is being prosecuted as an adult for the alleged attack on 19-year-old Sasha Fleischman on Nov. 4, 2013, defense attorney William DuBois said, "I think we will have a deposition in the case."
DuBois didn't disclose the terms of the potential plea agreement.
The plea bargain had been expected in court Friday, but when Thomas' case, which had been scheduled for 9 a.m., was called after 11 a.m., DuBois asked that it be postponed to next Thursday because Thomas' mother had to leave court to go to work.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Paul Delucchi said he wanted to make clear for the record that the reason that Thomas' case hadn't been called until late in the morning was that DuBois had been detained for longer than expected at an unrelated case in Contra Costa County.
Judge Delucchi said there's a backup trial date for Thomas if a plea agreement isn't finalized, but he "totally expects" that the case won't go to trial.
Fleischman, who identifies as neither male nor female, suffered second- and third-degree burns after Thomas, who was 16 at the time, allegedly used a lighter to set Fleichman's clothing on fire last year.
At the time, the teen was sleeping in the back of an AC Transit bus traveling near MacArthur Boulevard and Ardley Avenue in Oakland around 5:20 p.m.
Fleischman, a student at Maybeck High School in Berkeley, was treated at the burn unit at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco for three weeks, was released the day before Thanksgiving and returned to school the following week.
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On March 6, Thomas waived his right to have a preliminary hearing in the case.
DuBois said at that time that he doesn't dispute the basic facts of the incident and conceded that security footage from the AC Transit bus makes clear that Thomas set Fleischman on fire.
But DuBois said that details still needed to be clarified about Thomas' state of mind and other circumstances in the incident. He said it would be more appropriate for those issues to be explored at pretrial hearings and at trial than at a preliminary hearing.
Fleischman suffered second- and third-degree burns in the attack and spent three weeks in the burn unit at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco.
In addition to the mayhem and assault charges, Thomas faces hate crime clauses.
DuBois has previously said Thomas only intended to carry out a prank in which there would merely be a small puff of smoke and was "mortified" when Fleischman became engulfed in flames.
