The bribery and perjury case against Oakland police detective Phong Tran was thrown into limbo Monday, amid the revelation that Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson’s office had planned just days ago to dismiss all but one charge against the embattled homicide detective.
The seesawing decisions by Jones Dickson came during a hearing Monday, when Tran’s trial was expected to get underway with his case being assigned a trial judge. Instead, prosecutors were given several more days to finalize their decision on whether to pursue the full scope of their years-long case against Tran, or just a fraction of the charges.
Tran — a veteran detective with more than a decade of experience investigating homicides in the East Bay — faces three perjury-related charges and a single count of bribery of a witness. The ensuing scandal has led to lenient plea deals, multiple case dismissals and the overturning of at least three murder convictions, along with a sprawling review of up to 200 cases that he touched.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Roz Silvaggio said at a hearing Monday that she was told by Jones Dickson’s office on Thursday that prosecutors planned to drop all but one charge against Tran.
Yet Darby Williams, the deputy district attorney overseeing the case, said she received new information after that Thursday meeting, leading her to reverse course and to seemingly forge ahead with the four longstanding charges against the detective. Even so, Williams appeared to remain unsure on exactly how the case will go forward, adding that she would “definitely” know which charges she planned to bring against Tran this week.
Homicide detective Phong Tran pleaded not guilty Wednesday morning to perjury and other felony charges connected to his handling of a 2011 homicide investigation, a day after he was arrested and booked at Santa Rita Jail. (Courtesy of Alameda County SheriffÕs Office)
The prosecutor’s whipsawing stances led Silvaggio to delay assigning the case to a trial judge for a week. Tran’s trial must begin by April 1, under laws governing his right to a speedy trial.
After the hearing, Williams clarified that she had planned to dismiss two perjury-related counts, as well as the lone charge of bribery of a witness. The only remaining charge would have been count one, perjury under oath.
Tran’s attorney, Andrew Ganz, did not immediately comment to this news organization. He had said during Monday’s hearing that Williams first notified him two weeks ago that most of the charges against his client would be dismissed
The pre-trial drama comes barely six weeks after the district attorney’s office began signaling concerns about their case.
In a mid-January court filing, Williams said a key witness had apparently moved out of her apartment and was no longer answering prosecutors’ calls. That witness, Aisha Weber, claimed to have received thousands of dollars from Tran to parrot anything the detective wanted her to say at a 2016 murder trial, according to court records. She was the only alleged eyewitness, and both men on trial for the killing were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
She backtracked on that testimony in 2021 — prompting a former district attorney, Nancy O’Malley, to quietly overturn those murder convictions. Those men — Giovante Douglas and Cartier Hunter — were subsequently released from prison, and they later filed a federal civil rights lawsuit claiming numerous failures on the part of the Oakland Police Department.
At a June 2023 preliminary hearing in Tran’s case, Weber revealed that she received upwards of $30,000 from her partnership with the detective, including $5,000 stuffed inside an envelope barely a half-hour after stepping off the stand in the 2016 murder trial.
“I was debriefed by Tran,” she said at the hearing, in testimony that elicited a whistle from an onlooker in the courtroom gallery. “I was told where it happened. I was told the extent to which it happened. I was shown pictures of the actual crime scene. I was told dates and times. I was told what to say by officer Tran.”
The potential dismissal of charges follows an emerging trend for Jones Dickson, who spent much of her first year in office tossing numerous high-profile cases filed by her predecessors, most those filed by during Pamela Price’s tenure in 2023 and 2024.
In one five-month span, Jones Dickson’s office dismissed charges against nine law enforcement officers in three separate criminal cases. That included the manslaughter case against Jason Fletcher, the former San Leandro police officer accused of fatally shooting Steven Taylor in 2000 inside a Walmart.
Check back for updates on this developing story.