The victim was shot in the back of the head in 2015, amid tensions between an Antioch street gang and a Bay Area prison gang.
for William Pree, 41, and Edward Robinson, 45, in the 2015 shooting death of Kartiae Ely. The court justices ruled that both murder convictions are now invalid in light of SB 1437, a 2019 state law that drastically scaled back California’s felony murder rule, which allowed a person to be convicted of murder for committing a less serious felony that resulted in a homicide.
The justices ruled that instructions given by the trial judge — Diana Becton, who has since become Contra Costa’s District Attorney — would no longer be allowed, given the change in state law. The instructions gave jurors multiple paths to convict both men, beyond the prosecution’s theory that Pree had ordered the killing and Robinson had carried it out.
, a California prison gang based in the Bay Area, and that Robinson had shot Ely in the back of the head with a pistol. But while jurors convicted Robinson of murder, they didn’t find he personally shot Ely, nor did they convict him of possessing a pistol. He was convicted of possessing an assault rifle, which another witness reportedly told police he saw Robinson putting into the trunk of a car after Ely was shot.
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