OAKLAND – The number of murder cases jeopardized by a police detective with alleged credibility issues is growing.
Once again, prosecutors have conceded that Oakland police Detective Phong Tran’s work may have tainted a conviction.
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Tran was charged in 2023 with paying off and coercing witnesses in other cases to ensure guilty verdicts. The case against him remains active, but the allegations have caused a stir in Alameda County courts, where prosecutors have reviewed numerous active and resolved cases he worked on. At one point, they numbered an estimated 200.
It has resulted in lenient plea deals and dismissals — and a possible path to freedom for men like Buggs. It is rare for Alameda County prosecutors to do such a review, and the volume of such cases is even rarer.
Earlier this year, a California appellate court ruled that the murder conviction of another man, Marcel Prince, appeared troubled enough to send it back to Alameda County for briefings and a possible evidentiary hearing over whether he should get a new trial. The decision came after the California Attorney General’s Office acknowledged that “evidence of Tran’s misconduct was suppressed” when Prince first appeared before a jury in 2022.
The filings come as questions swirl about the future of Tran’s own criminal case under District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson, who has worked to unwind the legacy of her recalled predecessor, Pamela Price. Since being appointed to the job in February, Jones Dickson has dismissed multiple cases filed by Price, including indictments against an Oakland metal recycling company and two of its top staffers, while completely overhauling the unit that first filed charges against Tran in April 2023.
Tran, who faces multiple counts of perjury and bribery of a witness, is due to appear in court on July 17, when a judge is expected to set a trial date.
In a statement, Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods called for anyone with knowledge of Tran’s homicide work, including prosecutors, to come forward with any information documenting faults. He also suggested judges needed to do more than simply order new trials for the men Tran helped imprison.
“Any conviction tainted by Officer Tran’s corruption should be completely thrown out,” Woods said. “When dirty police work pollutes an investigation, it cannot be undone. It infects every part of the case.”
In a statement, Tran’s attorney said the fact that such murder convictions were newly imperiled “says nothing about the validity of the charges against Detective Tran.” He referenced the November recall of Price, who filed the charges against Tran, while claiming the detective and the community were “casualties of a war waged against them by the former DA that is fortunately over.”
“It is all predictable and by design; part of a playbook used by (Price) with the ultimate goal of tearing down anything related to criminal consequences,” said the attorney, Andrew Ganz.
The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Alameda County prosecutors claim Tran bribed witnesses to testify against his preferred murder suspects, then lied about the practice when taking the witness stand. The allegations are tied to the 2011 killing of Charles Butler Jr., 23, who was shot dead while arguing over a parking spot near his North Oakland home.
Authorities say Tran paid an unhoused mother of two children, Aisha Weber, thousands of dollars for coming forward to testify that she saw the killing and knew both the gunman and the getaway driver. That included a $5,000 cash payment Tran allegedly made about a half-hour after the woman finished testifying at the 2016 murder trial, according to court testimony.
The detective is also accused of offering to help free another woman’s son — who had been jailed on robbery charges — in exchange for her cooperation in identifying a suspect in Butler’s death. That woman claimed Tran told her, “We could help you with that, if you help me with this. Because we can overlook a robbery, but we cannot overlook a murder.”
Two men, Giovonte Douglas and Cartier Hunter, were tried and convicted in 2016 for the killing.
But in 2022 — when Price’s predecessor, Nancy O’Malley, was DA — prosecutors quietly overturned the convictions against them after Weber recanted her statement. Douglas and Hunter have since been released from prison and have filed a lawsuit against the Oakland Police Department.
State and county prosecutors now increasingly acknowledge problems with two more convictions.
In the June filing regarding the Buggs case, Alameda County prosecutor Tim Wagstaffe, while having some issues with the defense motion, took the unusual step of conceding most of the issues central to Buggs’ 2016 conviction. Prosecutors said he shot and killed Lester Young in September 2012 at a home in East Oakland.
The acknowledgement came after Buggs’ attorney, Jenny Brandt, argued that prosecutors knew about Tran’s alleged misdeeds, yet still brought a “weak case” that largely relied on the back-and-forth testimony of a 13-year-old witness.
Tran intentionally lied in a search warrant affidavit, according to Buggs’ attorney, and used “unreliable” techniques to steer witnesses to identify Buggs as a suspect. Tran had no recordings of interviews with the teen or another witness when Buggs was identified as a suspect — actions that take on new meaning in the years after prosecutors charged Tran with perjury, Buggs’ attorney argued in court filings.
“The new evidence establishes that this was not by mistake,” Brandt wrote. “Rather, it was part of Tran’s design.”
Much of Brandt’s argument boiled down to a simple question: If prosecutors knew all along about Tran’s alleged habit of ginning up false testimony, how could they also justify arguing to keep people investigated by him in prison?
On that and several other points, Wagstaffe agreed there were issues with the case, and Buggs may be entitled to an evidentiary hearing that would determine whether he gets a new trial.
A hearing date has yet to be set, while prosecutors and Buggs’ attorney continue sparring over Tran’s other alleged misdeeds.
Wagstaffe’s concession marks the second time in the last year that judges have looked favorably upon men sent to prison on the testimony of Tran’s witnesses.
Late last year, the California Attorney General’s Office conceded that prosecutors were aware of the misconduct allegations against Tran when they tried Marcel Prince in the 2021 shooting death of Eddie Williams Jr. Investigators claimed Prince also shot Williams’ girlfriend three times.
State prosecutors acknowledged that evidence of Tran’s alleged misconduct was “suppressed.” Any evidence he committed perjury, the authorities said, could have been used to toss the detective from the case. However, they added that they didn’t think the evidence in question was material to the case.
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.
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