The trial of Richard Everett, a knife-wielding man who was shot multiple times by police in August in the Tenderloin neighborhood, began this week, with a San Francisco judge turning down the District Attorney’s request to prohibit any mention of the police shooting.
“I think the jury should get more of the evidence rather than less of the evidence,” Superior Court Judge Teresa M. Caffese said on Tuesday morning as she ruled that the shooting could be discussed during the forthcoming trial.
“The jury is obviously going to know that there was a shooting,” Caffese noted. “It’s going to be obvious that the defendant was at the hospital.”
In a filing, the DA’s office called the shootings “irrelevant” and “unduly prejudicial.”
The incident took place Aug. 28, when a nearby resident called 911 at 10:30 p.m. claiming that Everett was wielding a knife and shouting at passersby. Everett was on Jones Street in the Tenderloin, and has since said he was sharpening his knife on the concrete.
Officers arrived and surrounded Everett, who may have been suffering a mental-health crisis. With their weapons drawn, the officers gave him conflicting commands — telling him to relinquish his knife, but also telling him he could keep the knife and that he was not in any trouble.
When Everett gathered his things and started to walk away, multiple police officers shot at him.
Everett sustained five gunshot wounds, according to the Public Defender’s Office.
He is now on trial, charged with brandishing a deadly weapon to resist arrest, possessing a dirk or dagger, and resisting or delaying a peace officer.
The DA’s office argued that introducing evidence of the police shooting, which they say occurred after Everett’s alleged crimes, “would only serve to inflame the passions of the jury” and confuse the issues that the jurors will consider at trial.
Caffese disagreed, after a lengthy consideration of several motions that began yesterday.
Everett gave a lengthy statement to police while he was recovering from his gunshot wounds in Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital — and while he was taking pain medication. His public defenders attempted to exclude this statement.
Public Defender Nuha Abusamra argued that Everett was incapable of giving a statement or waiving his Miranda rights because he was “in critical condition,” and suggested that his pain medication could have impaired his statement.
Caffese ruled in favor of prosecutors on this matter, determining that Everett “clearly understood the rights that he was giving up,” and found no evidence that he made any statement involuntarily.
Opening statements in the jury trial are expected to start next week.
When Everett gathered his things and started to walk away, multiple police officers shot at him.
I watched the police body camera footage at the public briefing. This man clearly “walked away” by moving towards officers while pulling the weapon from his waistline and holding it.
The SFPD had dozens of officers out there, for a single man, who had a knife that was probably legal. And at no point, including the moment they opened fired from multiple angles, did he ever show any aggression towards the officers, and was certainly no legitimate threat against what was practically an army. They are terrifying and embarrassingly incompetent.
You’re over thinking it, Bob. Cops don’t sit around donut shops planning their next attack on the marginalized. They usually come from mostly intact families and at least have been shown what the common good is and how to achieve it. Dude had a knife and if you know anything at all about closing speed, someone like that coming at you needs to be stopped at the first couple of steps. Thankfully he wasn’t killed, but that was just pure luck.
Hello,
I think the most important detail was that he was shot so many times.
There is an unwritten law among cops that if one shoots they all do.
Surely, one shot would have done it.
Five shots hit him; how many shots were fired ?
Something needs to be done to stop these ‘Premeditated Chain Reactions’.
Sorry, this is a ridiculous comment.
Thank you Mission Local for following this story when none of the mainstream publications dishonestly promoted by Google and Bing were bothered with it.
I live in the Tenderloin and walked down the same street Richard Everett was, only a short time before he was shot.
I think the honchos in mainstream media decided he was no George Floyd, and quashed the story.
What I viewed on the media that has since been clipped by the mainstream, was of an unhinged homeless man who wanted to salvage his dignity in the face of a system that cares nothing for him or people like him.
No one came to his defense: including the horde of hypocritical pseudo-leftists in San Francisco. It was as if everyone was tired of blatant discrimination and decided to make a peace offering with the capitalist powers that be.
I saw an essentially defenseless man overwhelmed by police force.
What makes it especially galling to me personally is that it happened by the Tenderloin Police Station which essentially ignores ALL criminal activity in the area which operates with a brazenness incomprehensible to outsiders.
The police are the criminals here. Everett is collateral damage in a city of deep and wide dysfunction.