OAKLAND — A Bay Area man has been resentenced from 60 years to life to 11 years with credit for 10, four years after he won his appeal in the killing of an award-winning East Bay artist, court records show.
Gregory Hall, 68, pleaded no contest to murder and received an 11-year prison term that was finalized last year, records show. In 2016, he was sentenced to life with no chance for parole until after 60 years for fatally stabbing 67-year-old Michael Thorn Bradley in 2012.
But two years after his sentence, Hall’s murder conviction was overturned when a California appeals court ruled that Judge Allan Hymer shouldn’t have allowed Hall to be questioned about a misdemeanor knife possession conviction during his trial. Hall took the stand and testified he wasn’t a violent person, which Hymer ruled opened the door to questioning about the prior knife case.
First District Appellate Court justices wrote, though, that the misdemeanor conviction “did not contradict any statement defendant made on the stand, or to the police, and it remained highly likely to be misunderstood as propensity and/or bad character evidence,” and noted Hymer had ruled three previous times that only prior felonies could be brought up.
After he won his appeal, Hall returned to Alameda County jail and plea deal negotiations began. Under the deal, he receives credit for 10 years he spent behind bars since his arrest in 2012.
Bradley was a UC Berkeley alumnus and a photographer, painter, sculpture, and poet. He won KQED’s Artist Award in 1974 and Purchase Prize at the San Francisco Art Festival, among other honors.
Shortly before his death, Bradley moved from Berkeley to Oakland, and Hall was his former next door neighbor who became homeless. Bradley periodically hired Hall for odd jobs, like landscaping, and the two became friends. The motive for the killing was unclear, but police said at the time Hall was regularly drinking and using methamphetamine.
According to police, Hall strangled Bradley with an extension chord and stabbed him numerous times in June 2012. Bradley’s badly decomposed body was found at his West Oakland apartment days later. Hall denied involvement in the killing, and said he failed to report it out of fear the real killers would come after him.
Police linked him to the crime through DNA found on bloody clothing in the area.
Source: www.mercurynews.com