Gang member arrested for kidnapping 96 hours after being bailed in a gun case begs judge to let him take back his guilty plea

January 2, 2025

A San Francisco gang member on probation after a gun possession conviction, who was bailed by a judge after being found with another gun, and then almost immediately arrested for kidnapping, appeared today before the same judge and said he regretted pleading guilty and wanted to change his mind.

Maurice Powell Jr was found with a 9mm handgun when he was arrested in Potrero Hill in June 2023. He was on supervised release following an earlier federal conviction for firearms possession and a state conviction for assault with a firearm arising out of a 2015 incident where he shot a woman in the face.

After a magistrate judge refused point blank to release him, Powell appealed to U.S. District Judge William Orrick. At a hearing on February 15 2024 Orrick agreed to send him to a halfway house but warned that he faced “the most severe consequences” if he walked away from it.

Four days after his release Powell was arrested again – this time for kidnapping, false imprisonment and domestic violence. He subsequently pleaded guilty to ‘being a felon in possession of a firearm’.

This afternoon in courtroom 2 of San Francisco federal courthouse, defense attorney Amy Craig asked that her client be allowed to take back his guilty plea.

Shortly after Powell inked a plea agreement with prosecutors, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down an opinion in USA v. Gomez which said that convictions such as Powell’s in 2015 – for ‘assault with a firearm’ – that can feature merely ‘reckless’ conduct, no longer qualified as crimes of violence.

This meant, she said, that the sentencing parameters envisaged in the binding plea agreement were wrong, as they now considerably overstated Powell’s criminal history. Unless he could withdraw the plea and correct the record, she said, he risked being sentenced based on incorrect calculations.

“It seems to me that Gomez does change the law in the Ninth Circuit,” said Judge Orrick today, allowing Powell to take back his plea. He observed that prosecutors were not disadvantaged and stressed that they could still argue for whatever sentence they thought was appropriate.

Powell then immediately pleaded guilty again to being a felon in possession of a firearm, without any agreement in place – a so-called ‘open plea’.

Sentencing will take place on January 16.

Powell and attorney Amy Craig at a hearing before Judge Orrick in February 2024

SFPD officers detained Powell in June 2023 as he was leaving a barber shop on Potrero Avenue and found a loaded 9mm Smith & Wesson pistol in his waistband,

He was indicted for ‘being a felon in possession of a firearm’ and accused of several probation violations.

Powell is best known for shooting a woman in the face during a 2015 drive by shooting. His record also includes gunpoint robbery (2011), home invasion burglary (2013), carjacking (2014) and firearm possession (2019).

Although he was denied pre-trial release by U.S. Magistrate Alex Tse at a hearing on December 4 2023, having asked to be referred to an inpatient drug rehabilitation program, he exercised his right of appeal.

“I’m leaning toward giving you the shot,” Judge Orrick told Powell at the appeal hearing in February 2024. “I want you to understand that if I’m wrong. and if you walk away from this program, if you don’t succeed in that program, when you came back – and you would come back as you would be found – you would be facing the most severe consequences.”

“The nightmare scenario for the Government is for Mr Powell to be out there and for what happened in 2015 – Mr Powell shot someone in the face – to happen again,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Lagrama said in opposition to release.

Powell’s father, Maurice Powell Sr, was earlier proposed as a ‘custodian’. Prosecutors pointed out that Powell Sr. was sentenced to six years in prison for assault with a firearm in 1991 and, subsequently was convicted of narcotics offenses and burglary.

Four days after Powell walked out of Santa Rita Jail he was arrested for “kidnapping, false imprisonment and domestic violence.”

At a preliminary hearing on March 12 2024, a superior court judge in Alameda County held him to answer on three felony charges and one misdemeanor charge arising from the incident. These state charges were later dismissed to allow federal prosecutors to deal with them.

Today U.S. District Judge William Orrick allowed Powell to take back his guilty plea and tear-up the plea agreement with prosecutors.

“Sentencing, as you recognize, is a tough thing and you want to make sure that you’re following what the law requires and the guidelines are…the starting piece of that and an important piece to get right,” said Judge Orrick.

“I’m going to be able to consider every argument the Government has…if he pleads open, so I don’t think the Government is impacted in a real way by that.”

“On the other hand Mr Powell would be impacted hugely if I applied the guidelines pre-Gomez – I would be open, I think, in the Court of Appeals, not only in this case but in some habeas [case] coming down the road, [to the accusation] that I was making a mistake.”

After accepting an ‘open’ guilty plea from Powell, Orrick ordered him to return on January 16 for sentencing.