OAKLAND — An Oakland man has been sentenced to prison to begin serving a life sentence after being convicted of murder in one homicide case and accepting a manslaughter plea deal in another.
Otis Wyatt, 26, was convicted of second degree murder last year in the 2016 killing of Darrell Daniel. After receiving a sentence of 25 years to life, Wyatt accepted a plea deal in a separate, unrelated killing for a concurrent 21-year term, court records show.
On Jan. 9, Wyatt was transferred from Santa Rita Jail to North Kern State Prison. He will be eligible for parole in 2038, according to prison records.
The plea deal required Wyatt to plead no contest to a single count of manslaughter in connection with a shooting at a 2016 birthday party in Oakland where 20-year-old Craig Fletcher-Cooks and 22-year-old Terrence McCrary were both killed. Wyatt was 19 at the time of both killings, which occurred two months before police say he shot and killed Daniel in another part of Oakland.
Family members of both Fletcher-Cooks and McCrary spoke out against the plea deal at Wyatt’s sentencing hearing, since it added no additional time to his life sentence, the Berkeley Scanner reported.
“I’m holding everyone in this room accountable for the work that they do — for you to be allowed to be held not accountable for this,” McCrary’s mother told Wyatt, according to the Scanner. “It’s beyond my imagination. I can’t understand a system that’s broken, that failed you as well as my child.”
Daniel was shot and killed shortly before 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 21, 2016, in the 1700 block of 11th Street in Oakland. A police witness later told authorities that Wyatt — using the stage name O Dog — was in a rap group called Up Gang and that two of his fellow group members were present for the murder, according to court records.
The informant claimed another member of the group was originally going to kill Daniel, but instead handed the gun to Wyatt. At the time of his arrest, police identified Wyatt as an associate of a gang based in Campbell Village in West Oakland.
At trial, Wyatt’s lawyer argued another man killed Daniel.
Source: www.mercurynews.com