By Brian Anderson
Valley Times

March 14, 2000

HAYWARD — The man accused of wounding 10 people on a crowded night at the Alameda County Fair is a ruthless attacker who was out for revenge after a violent argument between two gangs, a prosecutor told jurors Thursday.

A defense attorney for 24-year-old Jamai Johnson of Richmond argued, however, that a handful of eyewitnesses of the Fourth of July shooting in 1998 could not convincingly identify his client as the shooter while others ruled him out entirely.

During closing arguments in the four-week trial, attorneys painted two very different pictures of the Independence Day shooting that caused chaos at the Pleasanton fairgrounds.

"The evidence here is of multiple shots," said deputy district attorney Michael Roemer. "The evidence tells you what's in the mind of the person who brings all that to the county fair. The evidence tells you loud and clear he's prepared to kill."

During about two hours of his closing argument, Roemer also tried to refute suggestions raised by Johnson's attorney, Thomas Broome, that eyewitnesses could not definitively identify Johnson as the shooter.

Roemer reminded jurors of the prosecution's key witness Sheldon Spicer, who testified that he followed the shooter and then watched the gunman as he stood over a cowering man in a fair game booth, firing without expression.

"He turns to Sheldon Spicer and in an insolent tone says What are you going to do about it?'" Roemer said.

While Broome for the most part steered clear of Spicer's account of the midway mayhem, he tried to convince jurors that someone other than Johnson fired into the crowd that night.

In the hours following the 8 p.m. shooting, eyewitnesses gave authorities a description of the shooter. Those descriptions, Broome said, were not even close to that of Johnson.

"The size, the hair of that person does not fit Jamai Johnson at all," Broome said during his two-hour closing statement. "The evidence that Mr. Johnson did not do the shooting is overwhelming."

Broome also hinted to jurors that even if what Roemer contended during the trial is true, weapons may have been fired that night in self-defense.

"If someone is shooting at you, it's reasonable that you act in self-defense," he said.

Johnson is charged with 12 counts five counts of attempted murder, five counts of assault with a firearm and two counts of possessing cocaine and marijuana for sale. He is being held without bail in Santa Rita Jail.

Each attempted murder charge brings with it a maximum penalty of life in prison. The assault charges carry with them up to four years behind bars.