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OAKLAND -- Yusuf Bey IV ordered the death of the relative of a man who had killed his older brother, Devaughndre Broussard told jurors Monday morning. Bey IV, the former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, wanted the relative, Odell Roberson, dead in what Broussard called "an eye for an eye" philosophy practiced at the bakery. "He said, 'Take him out when you get the chance,'" Broussard told the jury at the triple-murder trial of Bey IV and his co-defendant, Antoine Mackey. Broussard, who has pleaded guilty to two murders and agreed to testify in exchange for a 25-year prison...

OAKLAND -- Jurors in the Chauncey Bailey murder trial flinched -- and some looked away -- Thursday morning when shown an autopsy photo of a face blasted away by shotgun pellets. Prosecutor Melissa Krum displayed the photo on a large screen as the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, Dr. Thomas Rogers, described the wound. One juror, a bald man in glasses, grimaced noticeably. Defendants Yusuf Bey IV and Antoine Mackey glanced at the photo and then looked away. It showed what Rogers described as an eight-inch wound of his "face bones, brain, skull, teeth." Krum asked Rogers the condition...

OAKLAND -- A woman with her baby grandchild in her car stopped at a red light on First Avenue near Lake Merritt on the morning of Aug. 2, 2007, looked around and said to herself, "Oh, there goes Chauncey Bailey." The woman, Sandra Moffett, said she knew Bailey, editor of the Oakland Post, from "functions around Oakland where you needed a reporter." "I've read his articles," she said Tuesday from the witness stand on the first day of testimony in the trial of two men charged with Bailey's murder. She noticed that Bailey had recently gotten a haircut. His short...

OAKLAND -- A spent shotgun shell fired from the gun used to kill journalist Chauncey Bailey on Aug. 2, 2007, was found in the bedroom of former Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV the next day, a prosecutor said Monday during opening statements in Bailey's murder trial. That spent shell matched the brand and type of load -- nine buckshot pellets -- of a shell found next to Bailey's body when he was gunned down near Lake Merritt, Deputy District Attorney Melissa Krum told jurors. The pellets were the same type that caused a savage wound to Bailey's...

When an attorney for one of the defendants in the killings of Oakland newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey and two other men tried to get the murder trial moved out of Alameda County last year, he compared his client to Nazi lieutenant Hermann Goering. Attorney Gary Sirbu argued that trying Antoine Mackey next to Yusuf Bey IV, the former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery accused of having ordered the killings, would be like trying Goering next to Adolf Hitler. The publicity surrounding the now-defunct black empowerment group is that widespread, and the bakery's former leader is that notorious, Sirbu said....

OAKLAND -- Lawyers wrapped up months of pretrial wrangling in the prosecution of two men charged with murdering journalist Chauncey Bailey and two others Monday, all but assuring that opening statements will begin after the seating of a jury March 21. Superior Court Judge Thomas Reardon scheduled no further court dates until 12 jurors and five alternates are selected from a pool of 109 people in two weeks. The defendants, former Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV and Antoine Mackey, both 25, lost motions Monday as Reardon steered the case forward after denying a change of venue motion...

OAKLAND -- A former Your Black Muslim Bakery associate suspected in a plot to kill witnesses in the Chauncey Bailey murder case appeared in court Monday on charges that he fired into an inhabited building in 2009. Gary Popoff, 42, was charged last month with shooting into a building in the 5800 block of San Pablo Avenue -- not far from where the bakery's headquarters once stood. He was also charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. Sources close to the investigation say Popoff was arrested in November 2009 with a gun, which later was matched to...

OAKLAND -- Most of the evidence collected during an investigation of a suspected plot to kill witnesses in the Chauncey Bailey murder case can be used against co-defendants Yusuf Bey IV and Antoine Mackey, a judge ruled late Thursday. At issue was how much of the material was protected by attorney-client privilege because it involved Bey IV's former lawyer, Lorna Patton Brown. Superior Court Judge Thomas Reardon, after hours of talks in chambers with lawyers and a lengthy closed-door hearing, ruled that only Brown's handwritten notes are off-limits. It was unclear exactly how prosecutors will now use the material. According...

OAKLAND -- Lawyer Lorna Patton Brown is resigning from the practice of law after being implicated in a plot by her former client, Yusuf Bey IV, to kill witnesses in the Chauncey Bailey murder case, sources said Wednesday. Brown, 64, smuggled a hit list out of jail in March that named witnesses her client wanted killed to prevent their testimony in his upcoming trial, according to court papers. It was unclear when her resignation will take effect. Brown did not return multiple messages Wednesday. "I don't think (the resignation) is a matter of public importance," Spencer Strellis, an attorney who...

OAKLAND -- A judge Friday rejected a request that he rule immediately on a change of venue motion in the murder case of journalist Chauncey Bailey and two other men. Lawyers for accused killers Yusuf Bey IV and Antoine Mackey asked Superior Court Judge Thomas Reardon to decide right away if their trial should be moved to Southern California so they would have time to appeal if Reardon said no. Reardon ruled last week that he would not determine if the trial had to be moved until after jury selection. He reiterated that position Friday, saying the request cut to...

OAKLAND -- The murder trial of two men accused in the murder of journalist Chauncey Bailey will remain in Alameda County -- for now. Superior Court Judge Thomas Reardon issued a one-sentence ruling late Tuesday that he will take the case through jury selection here while keeping open the possibility of moving it elsewhere if a fair panel cannot be seated. "It is hereby ordered that ruling on defendants' motion for change of venue is deferred pending voir dire (jury selection) in this matter," Reardon wrote. Lawyers for co-defendants Yusuf Bey IV and Antoine Mackey. both 24, said during a...

OAKLAND -- Yusuf Bey IV and Antoine Mackey are entitled to have their triple murder trial moved out of Alameda County because 70 percent of potential jurors familiar with charges against them think they are definitely or probably guilty, an expert testified Wednesday. "There is a reasonable likelihood the defendants would not receive a fair trial," the expert, Bryan Edelman, a social physiologist, said on the second day of a change of venue hearing before Superior Court Judge Thomas Reardon. In Los Angeles County -- which is where the pair wants Reardon to move the trial -- only 41 percent...

A federal judge has dismissed most of a civil-rights lawsuit filed by the former Oakland homicide detective who led the highly criticized investigation of journalist Chauncey Bailey's 2007 slaying. Sgt. Derwin Longmire had claimed in his April lawsuit that the Oakland Police Department, Assistant Chief Howard Jordan and Internal Affairs Division Lt. Sean Whent violated his constitutional rights and ruined his reputation by investigating his conduct and allowing information leaks while forbidding him from clearing his own name. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White this week ruled Longmire's case is full of holes and can't be sustained by the facts presented...

OAKLAND — Former Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV and co-defendant Antoine Mackey will likely seek a change of venue next month for their upcoming triple murder trial, lawyers in the case said Monday. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Morris Jacobson set a hearing on the matter for June 21 during a brief hearing. No motions have been yet filed. "We are exploring it," Bey IV's lawyer, Gene Peretti, said. Neither Bey IV nor Mackey appeared in court. Bey IV faces three counts of murder. He is charged with ordering the killings of journalist Chauncey Bailey and two...

Yusuf Bey IV ordered one of his bodyguards at the former Your Black Muslim Bakery to kill two witnesses in his upcoming triple murder trial, a plot that investigators unraveled before anyone was attacked, according to documents and officials. Bey IV — being held in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin — tasked Gary Popoff, 42, with "eliminating witnesses," an official with knowledge of the matter said Wednesday. According to police documents, investigators from the Alameda County District Attorney's Office arrested Popoff during a traffic stop near downtown Oakland on March 12 on suspicion of attempted witness intimidation, the same day...

OAKLAND -- A member of the now-defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery could face up to life in prison after being convicted today of charges that he kidnapped a mother and daughter in East Oakland in 2007 and tortured the daughter so she would reveal the location of a drug dealer's cash. Richard Lewis, 26, took off his glasses, put his hands over his face and then shook his head as he was found guilty of three counts of kidnapping, two counts of carjacking and one count of torture in Alameda County Superior Court. Lewis faces a maximum sentence of life...

OAKLAND — As Your Black Muslim Bakery teetered on financial collapse in the spring of 2007, Yusuf Bey IV bragged that robbing an East Oakland drug dealer known for wearing white suits and driving a Mercedes-Benz would net the business a $500,000 windfall, his half-brother, Yusuf Bey V, testified Monday. When Bey IV led four of his followers out on the night of May 17, 2007, Bey V said he believed they were going to find that dealer, Tim Crawford, and take his money. The bakery was more than $1 million in debt at the time and had filed for...

OAKLAND — The city's Police Department had an unwritten policy of avoiding confrontation with members of Your Black Muslim Bakery, a retired officer testified Thursday. That policy once included police retreating from the bakery's San Pablo Avenue complex despite reports of a woman being held there against her will, he said. Frank Gyson, who retired this year, said he did not recall when the incident took place. The bakery closed in August 2007 following the arrest of its leader, Yusuf Bey IV, and several of his followers on numerous felony charges, including kidnapping, torture and murder. "It wasn't a written...

A longtime Your Black Muslim Bakery associate with a checkered past in dealing with public money persuaded BART's board of directors on Thursday to award him half of a seven-figure energy-efficiency contract, despite BART staffers' recommendation to the contrary. Nedir Bey, 48, was a confidant and "spiritually adopted" son of the late Yusuf Bey, Your Black Muslim Bakery's founder. Once a respected community institution, the bakery has been linked to decades of various frauds, abuses of women and children, and violent episodes, including several homicides. Bey's own background includes a $1.1 million Oakland city loan never repaid and campaign matching...

Despite state investigators and other experts saying that a detective's ties to Your Black Muslim Bakery's young leader compromised his investigation of a journalist's slaying, the Oakland Police Department will decline to discipline him, police sources say. Sgt. Derwin Longmire, who investigated the Aug. 2, 2007, killing of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey in downtown Oakland, will return to work within days, according to three department sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. He was reassigned from homicide to patrol last year, and he has been on paid administrative leave since April pending possible disciplinary action in this case. Longmire's...