Oakland murder case advances despite ties to homicide detective under scrutiny

OAKLAND — The suspect in a 2019 killing has been ordered to stand trial after a preliminary hearing that revealed the break in the case came from a detective accused of fabricating tips and bribing witnesses, court records show.

Andre Griffin, 42, is charged with murder in the Dec. 23, 2019 killing of 36-year-old Keith Woodson, and has been in jail for more than six years awaiting a resolution in his case. At his preliminary hearing last April, Oakland police testified that Griffin was identified after Det. Phong Tran told colleagues he’d received an “anonymous tip” about Woodson’s killer, along with an Instagram handle that tied back to Griffin.

The identification led to the search of a car lot where the suspected murder weapon was found, and Griffin was later identified from surveillance footage of the shooting by another detective, Jose Barocio, who had arrested Griffin and was familiar with him, according to police testimony.

The defense attorney for Griffin says he doesn’t trust the tip or the search to which it led.

“If the foundation is bad, the house is bad,” Assistant Public Defender Brian Amaya argued at the preliminary hearing, after pointing out that the anonymous tip wasn’t recorded or documented in any way. In court filings, Amaya provided two alternate theories: that Tran paid off the person who made the call, or that the detective fabricated it entirely.

Judge Clifford Blakely, who presided over the preliminary hearing, wasn’t moved by the argument. He said Tran’s involvement appeared to be minimal and the anonymous tipster’s information would have been essentially meaningless if Barocio hadn’t identified Griffin independently.

“Officer Tran didn’t ID anyone,” Blakely said, before upholding charges of murder and assault against Griffin.

Woodson was shot and killed on the afternoon of Dec. 23, 2019. Surveillance footage from a liquor store across the street shows a man approaching Woodson and two friends who are leaning against a building, then opening fire at the trio. Woodson was killed, and one of his companions survived a gunshot wound to the buttocks, according to police testimony. The surviving victim didn’t identify the shooter but told police the man had come by, greeted Woodson in a seemingly friendly way, but then returned with a gun.

Griffin was arrested the following month, and identified himself in a surveillance video still from inside a store before the shooting, wearing a similar outfit. He remains at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, on a no-bail hold. He is next due in court on Aug. 17, records show.

Police say they searched a car lot where the shooter was seen lurking afterwards, and found a gun inside an old Saab. But DNA tests failed to link Griffin to the firearm, according to police testimony.

The main linkage came from Barocio, Det. Wenceslao Garcia testified. During cross-examination, Garcia said Tran’s tip was shared with the entire homicide unit. When asked about Tran’s pending bribery and perjury charges, Garcia said he only knew that Tran had been charged with something — the specifics were a mystery to him, he stated under oath.

“I know he’s on leave and he’s facing some type of criminal matter, but I don’t know what the official offense was,” Garcia testified.

While Garcia might not know about Tran’s case, many others in the justice system do. Tran was charged with bribing witnesses and lying under oath in 2023, after two men who’d been convicted of murder were released when a key witness changed her story and claimed Tran had fabricated the case. Since current District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson took office, prosecutors have waffled on the case, citing their inability to track down the woman who implicated Tran.

But the scandal has resulted in lenient plea deals and outright dismissals in other murder cases, as well as an internal review of more than 100 homicide investigations. Tran, who isn’t due in court again until October, expects to be vindicated if the case goes to trial, his defense team has said.

As for Griffin, just three years before his arrest on murder charges, he was looking forward to the birth of a new child and marrying his girlfriend, he wrote in court filings at the time. He was sentenced to federal prison in 2012 for selling two ounces of cocaine to undercover officers, then re-arrested for beating a fellow resident in a halfway house after his release from prison. Charged with a probation violation, Griffin was sentenced to another six months in custody in 2017.

His attorney in the federal probation case wrote that Griffin admitted it was “stupid” to fight someone over a clothes iron at the halfway house, and added, “Mr. Griffin is not a person who resolves disagreements with violence.” Other court records say he lost a brother to gun violence in Oakland.

In an apology letter to the court, Griffin added that he was under a lot of stress at the time and said he was distraught over missing the first years of his daughter’s life due to incarceration in the cocaine case. He and his girlfriend were expecting a new baby, he wrote in 2017, and he said he was looking forward to a bright future.

“I plan on moving in with her upon my release. I love her and have plans of marrying her once I’ve been released from incarceration,” Griffin wrote.