SAN FRANCISCO — A California appeals court has reversed the second degree murder conviction against DeAngelo Cortijo, a criminal justice advocate from the East Bay, despite a rare dissenting view by one of the three judges on the panel.

Cortijo, 26, was convicted in 2018 of killing 26-year-old Oakland resident Jamad Jerkins, who was fatally shot in October 2016. But in a decision issued March 6, the appeals court reversed that conviction, finding that a mistrial should have been declared during testimony of the prosecution’s very first witness.

That witness, Jerkin’s girlfriend told jurors that Jerkins had described to her an earlier incident in which Cortijo pulled a gun on the defendant. Because the claims were were hearsay, the comments were stricken from the record and jurors were instructed not to consider the claims within. But the trial judge denied a motion for a mistrial, ruling that the woman’s testimony hadn’t tainted the jury’s opinion of Cortijo beyond repair.

The appellate court contradicted that claim, however, calling the judge’s failure to grant the mistrial motion an “abuse of discretion.” The hearsay testimony was so significant, they wrote, it had handcuffed the defense’s case and that as.a result, the trial shouldn’t have been allowed to proceed.

“Given the nature of the charges concerning a gunpoint encounter, any prior incident, regardless of which man was armed, would undoubtedly have an impact on the jury’s decisions,” the decision, signed by Judges J. Jackson and J. Petrou, said. The California Supreme Court has not yet determined if it will review the case.

But appellate court Judge Carin Fujisaki disagreed with her colleagues, and wrote a lengthy dissent saying that despite the hearsay testimony, jurors had had plenty of evidence to reach a murder conviction.

“There was overwhelming evidence—independent of (Jerkin’s girlfriend’s) statement—pointing to defendant’s guilt of second-degree implied-malice murder. Much of that evidence consisted of testimony from defendant’s own mouth,” Fujisaki wrote, later adding, “Not only should 11 we presume that the jurors followed the trial court’s admonitions to disregard any stricken testimony, but there is no reasonable likelihood that but for hearing [Jerkin’s girlfriend’s] statement, the jury would have been persuaded to reach a different outcome.”

Cortijo was a well-known criminal justice advocate before his arrest in 2016, and used his personal experience in juvenile detention and foster care to influence policy while working as an intern at the National Center for Youth Law in Oakland. Colleagues from the center were at times present during the trial. Cortijo was featured in media coverage on efforts to reform the misuse of psychiatric medications to children in foster care and for his experiences in solitary confinement. That subject was also the focus of an investigative series by this newspaper in 2014.

During the 2018 trial, Cortijo testified Jerkins had tried to enter his apartment and had slapped a pistol out of his hands. The gun then inadvertently discharged, Cortijo said, effectively arguing that he had not pulled the trigger.

“I didn’t shoot Jamad. A bullet came out, but I didn’t shoot him,” Cortijo said during the trial. But Jerkin’s ex-girlfriend, a key witness in the case, testified that she saw Cortijo shoot the victim, telling the courtroom, I “saw Jamad’s body drop, and then smoke.”

Cortijo is currently incarcerated in California State Prison, Los Angeles County.