Judge rejects Raymond ‘Shrimp Boy’ Chow’s plea for new trial
By Bob Egelko Updated 3:43 pm, Thursday, June 2, 2016
Photo: Jen Siska, Associated Press
Raymond “Shrmp Boy” Chow faces a mandatory life prison sentence.
A federal judge denied a new trial Thursday to Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, the leader of a Chinatown community organization, who was convicted in January of racketeering and murder.
A jury found Chow guilty of running the century-old Ghee Kung Tong as a racketeering enterprise and ordering the 2006 murder of its former leader. He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison. The charges arose from a five-year undercover FBI investigation that also snared former state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, convicted of accepting bribes.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who presided over the trial, turned down defense arguments for a new trial Thursday that included a claim that the judge had unfairly limited the number of witnesses testifying on Chow’s behalf. The defense called Chow and eight supporting witnesses to the stand, compared with 46 for the prosecution.
In his ruling, Breyer said Chow’s lawyers had initially proposed 70 witnesses and later reduced the number to 49, but failed to specify why most of the witnesses’ proposed testimony would be admissible in court or would not duplicate the testimony of others. Breyer said he allowed only a single defense witness on each of a series of topics, such as Chow’s good deeds and alleged FBI misconduct, but approved 17 witnesses whom the defense decided not to call.
Defense lawyers also argued that Breyer had wrongly allowed prosecutors to cross-examine Chow about his alleged involvement in the 1991 murder of a man named Danny Wong, which he had described to federal agents in 2002 as part of a plea agreement. That agreement barred prosecutors from using his statements against him, as long as he spoke truthfully.
But Breyer said Chow’s lawyer had “opened the door” by telling jurors Chow was not the kind of person who would order a murder. When a prosecutor then questioned him about the Wong murder, he denied having ordered it, contradicting his 2002 statement and thus inviting further questioning, Breyer said.
In response, defense lawyer Tyler Smith said Breyer’s ruling on the Danny Wong issue was “flat wrong” and he was confident an appeals court would overturn it.
Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email:
begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: egelko
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