Two years after charging man in Oakland beating death, DA’s office says it can’t prove he did it

Michael Perillo spent two years incarcerated at Santa Rita Jail and a mental health hospital before the case was dismissed on Aug. 31.

admin September 8, 2026 2 minutes read

OAKLAND — Two years after he was arrested and charged with murder, an East Bay man has been released from jail and the case against him dismissed, court records show.

Michael Perillo, 47, spent two years split between Santa Rita Jail and a mental hospital since his 2024 arrest. He was charged with beating Edson Perez to death on the 300 block of 8th Street in Oakland. Perez was assaulted by two men who used a bicycle and a mallet as weapons. One of them died in a motorcycle crash shortly after the killing, according to police.

The prosecution of Perillo seemed fraught after his February preliminary hearing, where Judge Thomas Stevens noted a key eyewitness for the prosecution was “all over the map” and didn’t appear reliable. Stevens allowed the case to proceed, noting there were multiple inferences to draw from the evidence and that one interpretation implicated Perillo. But if the case had gone to trial and jurors viewed the case the same way as Stevens, they would have been instructed to acquit him; the legal standard for trials is far more stringent than preliminary hearings.

A spokesman for the Alameda County District Attorney declined to comment on the dismissal, saying the investigation remains open. Prosecutors dismissed the charges on Aug. 31, citing insufficient evidence, court records show.

The dismissal was announced in a news release by Brandon Owen, a Republican state assembly candidate who received about 8.5 percent of the vote in a six-person race for District Nine last June. Owne became a champion of Perillo’s innocence and said in the release that Perillo’s family is hiring a civil attorney to address the failed prosecution and injuries Perillo suffered during his two-year incarceration.

“Michael Perillo is a homeless man with documented mental health issues. He was not wealthy. He was not politically connected. He was not someone with power in the system,” the news release says. “But that did not make him disposable. That did not make him invisible. That did not make him guilty.”