OAKLAND (BCN) —A Berkeley man was sentenced today to 40 years in state prison for fatally shooting a man in East Oakland three years ago.
Calvin Odom, 27, was convicted in February of second-degree murder, using a firearm to cause death and being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm for the death of Vittorio Jackson, 37, in the 8900 block of International Boulevard at about 4:10 p.m. on March 31, 2013.
Prosecutor Warren Ko told jurors in his closing argument in the case that Odom and Jackson got into an argument and “a scuffle escalated and ended with a shooting in the middle of the parking lot” of a Laundromat in an area he said is well-known for drug activity.
But Odom’s lawyer Darryl Stallworth said Odom should be found not guilty, saying that prosecution witnesses who identified him as the shooter weren’t credible and one witness actually identified another man as the shooter.
Odom was charged with being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm because prosecutors say he has three prior felony convictions for drug and illegal gun charges in Alameda County between 2007 and 2011.
In another case, Odom and co-defendant Craig Goatley pleaded guilty in January 2014 to armed bank robbery for stealing nearly $9,000 from a Citibank branch at 1526 Webster St. in Alameda on Aug. 3, 2013, more than four months after the fatal shooting of Jackson.
Federal authorities said Odom and Goatley were arrested on Aug. 14, 2013, after a high-speed chase in which they were in a stolen car that was driven by Goatley.
In April 2014, Odom was sentenced to eight years in federal prison and Goatley was sentenced to seven years.
Odom wasn’t charged with murder for Jackson’s death until September 2014, 18 months after Jackson was shot.
Stallworth said Oakland police conducted 25 interviews while they were investigating the case and considered “several theories and several suspects” before Odom was finally charged.
After Odom was convicted, Stallworth said that he was “extremely disappointed” with the jury’s verdict because he believes the evidence in the case indicated that Odom couldn’t have been at the scene of the shooting in the Laundromat’s parking lot because he was in the stairwell of a nearby building at the time.
Stallworth also said he doesn’t think Odom matches the description of the shooter that was provided by the prosecution’s witnesses.
After the verdict, Ko said, “The jury found enough consistencies between the witnesses’ testimony and the physical evidence in the case to reach the right conclusion,” which he said was that Odom was the shooter.
Jackson’s family members attended every day of Odom’s trial but didn’t show up for his sentencing today.
Ko said Jackson “hung out with the drug crowd but he was well-loved and didn’t deserve to be killed.”
Alameda County Superior Court Judge C. Don Clay said today that he will allow Odom to begin serving his term of 40 years to life for Jackson’s death at the same time that he finishes the last few years of his federal bank robbery sentence.