The only ones left Alameda police charged with involuntary manslaughter in the 2021 death of Mario Gonzalez pleaded not guilty Friday in a case that has drawn comparisons to the killing of George Floyd four years ago in Minneapolis.

Eric McKinley, 38, remained largely silent as his attorney entered the plea Friday. He was ordered back to court on Nov. 7 for a key evidentiary hearing that will determine whether the case will proceed to trial.

The officer’s plea came just weeks after two others Alameda officers saw their case dismissed over concerns that the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office waited too long to charge the men, violating the three-year statute of limitations.

The layoffs continued to plague Gonzalez’s family Friday. Outside the courthouse, his mother, Edith Arenales, suggested those involved in her son’s death were not fit to remain police officers.

“We’re still here. We’re still fighting,” Arenales said.

The case has seen many twists and turns since then Gonzalez died on April 19, 2021as officers piled on top of the man until he stopped breathing while trying to make an arrest. Alameda officers suspected Gonzalez violated a municipal law that prohibits open containers of alcohol in public placesand they tackled him when he resisted being handcuffed, according to police video.

Gonzalez was pinned to the ground and screamed for several minutes before he was knocked unconscious, the video showed.

Alameda County Coroner’s Office later ruled his death a homicideciting “stress of strife and restraint” while noting the “toxic effects of methamphetamine”, “morbid obesity” and “alcoholism” as contributing factors. Former Alameda District Attorney Nancy O’Malley cleared the cops of criminal offences, suggesting that their response was “objectively reasonable”.

But one independent autopsy requested by Gonzalez’s family determined that the primary cause of death was “limited suffocation.” It also found the methamphetamine levels in his body were too low to contribute to his death.

On April 18 — one day before the third anniversary of Gonzalez’s death — Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price called a rare after-hours news conference to announce charges against the men. The 11th-hour decision came about “trying to rebuild trust in a system that hasn’t always been fair to people, especially in Alameda County,” Price said at the time.

Yet on October 7, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Scott Patton dismissed the allegations against the two other officers in the case, James Fisher and Cameron Leahy, after he found Price’s office failed to secure the necessary paperwork before the three-year statute of limitations expired.

McKinley was an exception, Patton noted, because he spent the first five months of the year on a volunteer mission trip in South Africa, causing the statute of limitations in his case to be suspended while he was out of state.

On Friday, McKinley’s attorney said in court he received an email from Price the night before saying she “had a confidential communication with the deceased’s family member regarding representation” before Price took office, when she was a private attorney. The attorney, Jim Shore, said the email came in response to a lawsuit filed by McKinley’s attorney, and he said it could form the basis of a motion to recuse the district attorney’s office from the case.

No such motion had been filed as of Friday morning. Shore did not offer any more details in court about when Price spoke with the family, including when the conversation occurred or its content.

Price’s communications team declined on Friday to comment on the matter.

Originally published: 25 October 2024 at 15.54