OAKLAND — Two years after a Bay Area man beat a murder charge in Alameda County after his attorney accused police of improperly influencing an eyewitness, a federal judge has sentenced him to two years in prison for possessing a gun he reportedly dropped while running from police.
Franklin Ervin, 25, was sentenced to 25 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam. He is scheduled to be released in November 2023, court records show.
Ervin was charged with possessing a pistol that was recovered after officers attempted to arrest him in July 2021 as part of an investigation into three San Francisco-based gangs known to hang out in Oakland. Ervin got away from the police after a Honda pulled up to give him a ride during a foot chase, but dropped the pistol as he ran, according to prosecutors.
In April 2020, Ervin was one of three people arrested and charged in the killing of Corey Clay, 19, of Oakland, who was fatally shot at around 10 a.m. Dec. 3, 2019 in the 900 block of 69th Avenue. But the case was dismissed just five months later, after Ervin’s attorney accused Oakland police of botching the investigation through an “egregious” example of unduly influencing an eyewitness.
Ervin’s attorney wrote in a motion filed Aug. 26, 2020 that Oakland police detectives presented an eyewitness with a photo lineup containing five pictures of men aged 30-54 and one photo of Ervin, who was in his early 20s. The witness had already both stated that the killers were men in their early 20s and that he didn’t see their faces. The defense argued that police set up a situation where Ervin was the only person in the lineup who looked remotely like the suspects the witness described.
On Sept. 8, the day the motion was to be heard, prosecutors dismissed murder charges against Ervin and his co-defendant, Miller Steve Jernigan, 26, and threw out accessory charges against Msdymon Beatrice Jermaine, court records show.
Like Ervin, Jernigan eventually ended up in federal court facing gun possession charges. In November 2021, he was sentenced to two years in federal prison after pleading guilty to being a felon in possession of a pistol recovered by San Francisco police during a January 2020 traffic stop.
For Ervin, the July 2021 incident was part of a string of gun-related arrests. In December 2020, he was found to be in possession of one of two guns found by San Francisco police in an Infiniti, court records show. The other gun was linked by DNA to 28-year-old Steven Mitchell, who was shot and killed in Vallejo in September 2021.
In August 2021, Ervin admitted possession of a gun found in a stolen blue Jaguar, which he drove in a high-speed chase through Richmond and Interstate 80 that reached speeds of 120 miles per hour, prosecutors said in court records.
Ervin’s attorney, Kenneth Wine, wrote that 25 months — and not a higher sentence he would have faced under federal guidelines — was appropriate given Ervin’s traumatic upbringing.
“His childhood was spent surviving on the streets with a largely absent mother, who worked more than full-time to support Mr. Ervin and his two siblings,” Wine wrote. “His father was not only absent, he was in and out of prison, which led Mr. Ervin to conclude, as a child, that prison must not be a bad place – in effect, normalizing his father’s bad behavior. At the age of 5, Mr. Ervin’s uncle was murdered. At age 7, he witnessed a murder that took place in his front yard. Shootings and drug use were everyday occurrences.”
