Prosecutors had no grounds to file murder charges in the fatal beating of a 59-year-old San Francisco man on a downtown Oakland street, an attorney for one of the defendants said Friday, describing his client as "not an evil person."

"This is not a murder case. This is a case that, in our opinion, has been overcharged," Adanté Pointer, attorney for defendant Lavonte Drummer, 18, said after a brief hearing in an Oakland courtroom.

Pointer said the case could be "something else," but did not elaborate on any potential defense.

Drummer and Dominic Davis, 18, both Oakland residents, have been charged with murder in connection with what authorities called a random, unprovoked attack on Jin Cheng Yu, 27, last week and the subsequent fatal beating of his father, Tian Sheng Yu.

The two Oakland men, both of whom have juvenile arrest records, appeared before Judge Yolanda Gonzalez Rogers in Alameda County Superior Court but did not enter pleas during their second court appearance. They are being held without bail.

Davis' attorney, John McDougall, declined to comment.

Prosecutors say the men were drinking rum, were upset about their lives and were looking for someone to punch shortly before they attacked the Yus on April 16 as father and son were on their way to shop for coins at a jewelry store. Prosecutors based that account on statements they say Drummer and Davis made to police.

Authorities say the son was sucker-punched first as the elder Yu was parking his car on Broadway. When Tian Sheng Yu approached the two men near the Fox Theater on Telegraph Avenue and, in Mandarin, demanded an explanation for the attack, the assailants turned on him, police say.

Drummer told investigators that "he had anger and frustration over his life and planned on hitting someone," police wrote in a statement that outlined grounds for the arrests.

In an interview with KTVU-TV on Friday, Police Chief Anthony Batts said that "to say that they were frustrated with their life is, for me, a bunch of crap. The reality is, I grew up in a very tough neighborhood. That does not give you the right to take a life."

Batts said he planned to meet with community leaders to defuse tensions that have arisen in the wake of Yu's slaying.

Yu was Chinese American and the two defendants are African American. Prosecutors did not file hate-crime charges, saying the men hadn't picked out their victims for racial reasons.

Pointer said of the slaying, "This is not a hate crime. My client has expressed remorse as it relates to this loss of life. He's a young man that has found himself in the middle of a very tragic situation, and he's not an evil person."

The attorney added, "Intoxication may have played a part in this case."

Also Friday, Yu's widow, Zhi Rui Wang, 56, paid her respects to her husband during a Buddhist vigil outside the Fox Theater, exactly a week after he was attacked. After a monk provided a blessing, Wang laid a bouquet of white flowers on a table adorned with incense, oranges and apples.

"We should stop all the violence. We should be able to live safely and comfortably in the community," Wang said in Mandarin. "I promise you that I will stand strong, and my son will continue to look for work and study and contribute to the community."

She declined to comment on Pointer's statements, saying only that she believed in the justice system.