OAKLAND — The defendant in a 2021 murder case was released through a plea deal, ending a tumultuous and controversial prosecution that including one judge dismissing the charge over another judge’s actions, and a defense attorney lambasting the “series of lies” behind it, court records show.

Leland Moore, 54, pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of 22-year-old Harold Jackson, and was sentenced to six years he had already served in jail. Jackson was killed Oct. 29, 2021, on the 900 block of 85th Avenue, and Oakland police highlighted Moore’s arrest at the year’s end, a police spokesman citing it as evidence that the department’s homicide division “continues to work around the clock to solve homicide cases and bring justice to families who have lost loved ones to homicide.”

But court records show that Moore called 911 immediately after the shooting, and reported that she had just shot Jackson in self-defense. It was a story he never wavered from, even after Jackson’s fiancee told police that she witnessed Moore chasing him down and shooting him in the back several times as he fled the area. It was a harrowing story where she insisted Jackson had been unarmed the whole time and said after he was shot, she reached into his car, grabbed his pistol, and fired at Moore until he ran away, court records show.

But the woman’s story began to fall apart over time. A year after the incident — and several police interviews where she had failed to disclose this detail — she admitted Jackson had been armed and that she hid his gun in “bushes” out of safety concerns, because her daughter was in the area. A defense investigation found Jackson’s sister actually came up, retrieved the gun, and fled the area, and Moore’s lawyer found multiple eyewitnesses who he said could have testified that the shooting started from precisely the area where Jackson’s fiancee was standing by the vehicle.

“The natural conclusion from all this evidence is that she was lying in wait with a gun ready,” Moore’s lawyer, Daniel Shriro, wrote in court filings. “She then tried to shoot Mr. Moore when he got close enough, and she manufactured a series of lies over multiple interviews with investigators to cover up that fact.”

The Alameda County District Attorney responded to the fiancee’s admissions about hiding the gun by granting her immunity from prosecution when she took the stand at Moore’s 2022 preliminary hearing. Shriro, was barred from calling the witnesses he said could have established that Moore was actually the victim of an ambush and plot to kill him.

Judge C. Don Clay, who presided over the hearing, noted that defense witnesses were reluctant to come to court and said he was unconvinced after hearing from two defense witnesses. He said that Jackson was shot “seven times in the back” and was not going to be swayed based on the word of people who “thought they heard something.”

“This Court is going to do holding order, and I’m not going to reduce this case to a manslaughter based upon this evidence that has been presented by the defense and the prosecution,” said Clay, who retired in 2024 and currently chairs San Francisco’s police commission. “So that being said, no further witnesses.”

Judge Thomas Reardon subsequently dismissed the case against Moore, siding with a defense motion that argued Clay had “severely limited” the defense’s case and even refused to listen to Moore’s 911 call after the shooting. Prosecutors immediately re-filed the murder charge against Moore, but state law only allows one such re-do. If the case had been dismissed again for any reason, that would have been final.

Prosecutors argued in court filings that Moore, “was not defending himself but rather aiming and firing his gun at the departing and fleeing Mr. Jackson with an intent to kill.” Shriro wrote in a sentencing memo that it was the defense who “took the lead” in getting to the bottom of what happened.

“Everything Mr. Moore said has been gradually corroborated as the facts develop,” Shriro wrote. “Not only in Shakespeare, but in the real world, the truth will out!”