El Sobrante: Hate crime charges dropped in musician slaying - East Bay Times

MARTINEZ — The shooting death of a Richmond musician is no longer being prosecuted as a hate crime, after a grand jury indicted three men on murder, assault and robbery charges but refused the prosecution’s request to say the homicide was motivated by the victim’s race.

The case centers on the Nov. 12 slaying of Willie Sims, 28, who was brutally beaten at an El Sobrante bar called the Capri Club, then shot in the head outside after he approached a car containing two of his assailants, according to prosecutors. Sims was so badly injured in the beating that the police officer who first found his body assumed he had been struck by a car.

In the following weeks, police identified and arrested three suspects: Ray Simons, 32, Daniel Ortega, 31, and Daniel Porter-Kelly, 31. Prosecutors sought hate crime charges, saying the three had targeted Sims, who was African-American, because of his race.

Sims, who was 28, played the guitar, saxophone, violin and piano but was best known as a jazz musician. He played with a college group called Jazz-ology that won several awards and performed at jazz festivals throughout Northern California.

The case began taking twists after one defendant, Porter-Kelly, filed a successful motion to sever himself from defendants Ortega and Simons. Porter-Kelly was not present when Sims was shot. In fact, he’d left in a car four minutes earlier.

Prosecutors, though, say he instigated a confrontation with Sims and joined Simons and Ortega in jumping Sims inside the bar, leading to the shooting. When Porter-Kelly was severed from the case, prosecutors dismissed the charges and immediately re-filed them against all three defendants.

Porter-Kelly’s attorney, Colin Cooper, responded by insisting on a speedy preliminary hearing, a rare move in murder cases. That’s when prosecutors sought the grand jury indictment against all three. During grand jury proceedings, prosecutors ask witnesses questions outside the presence of defense lawyers or defendants. There is no cross-examination, but prosecutors are expected to introduce exculpatory evidence.

In a bail hearing following the grand jury’s indictment, Deputy District Attorney Chris Walpole said he could not explain why grand jurors did not seek hate crime enhancements for the murder charge. He said that while jurors opted not to hold the defendants responsible for a hate crime, he respected their decision.

A sound recorder caught Porter-Kelly using the N-word in reference to Sims at the bar, Walpole said. Minutes later, the three defendants attacked Sims in the back of the bar, Walpole said.

“This all started with Daniel Porter-Kelly,” Walpole said, while conceding Porter-Kelly wasn’t present for the shooting.

Cooper said Porter-Kelly and his friends used the N-word as a term of endearment and didn’t mean it in a hateful way. He described the homicide as a tragedy and said prosecutors had assumed it was a hate crime because it happened four days after Donald Trump was elected president.

Porter-Kelly, said Cooper, is a hard-working family man who still had a job waiting for him should he be granted bail. He said that only a single, unreliable prosecution witness had said that, maybe, Porter-Kelly had punched Sims once in the back of the bar.

“(Porter-Kelly) had nothing to do with it. Nothing,” Cooper said, later adding, “He is desperate for his day in court.”

Judge Theresa Canepa refused to lower Porter-Kelly’s bail but said she did not consider him to be a flight risk. She appeared open to the possibility of allowing Porter-Kelly to post the equity of a home as bail, which has been set at $1.08 million.

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