Ex-Contra Costa Sheriff to be released from prison in on-duty fatal shooting

SAN QUENTIN — The first officer convicted of a crime from an on-duty shooting in Contra Costa is set to be released from prison, authorities said.

Andrew Hall, 35, has served enough of his six-year state prison term to qualify for release from prison. He is set to be released from San Quentin Rehabilitation Center on Friday, where he spent the bulk of his sentence in a prison firehouse away from the facility’s main yard, authorities said.

Activists are planning a protest of Hall’s release at 1 p.m. Friday, at the sheriff’s office on Muir Road.

In 2021, Hall was convicted of assault in the 2018 fatal shooting of 33-year-old Laudemer Arboleda. Jurors failed to reach a verdict on a related manslaughter charge. Hall killed Arboleda during a slow-speed chase through Danville, after jumping in front of Arboleda’s vehicle, then backpedaling out of the way as he fired repeatedly into it.

An internal probe cleared Hall of any wrongdoing. The Contra Costa District Attorney’s office reached a different conclusion, but one that took three years for prosecutors to make. By then, Hall had killed a second man on duty in another controversial incident, and the delay led to a backlash from activists and a critical grand jury report recommending fundamental changes to reduce such delays.

Weeks before he was charged in Arboleda’s killing, Hall shot and killed 32-year-old Tyrell Wilson in March 2021, when Wilson pulled a knife and took a step toward him. Like with Arboleda, Hall was cleared by an internal sheriff’s probe. The DA’s office later declined to charge him in Wilson’s killing, saying that they interviewed multiple police force experts who failed to reach a consensus on whether it was justified.

A grand jury report released May 24, 2023 concluded that the time taken to investigate and charge hall was “significantly more than in other well-publicized officer-involved death,” including George Floyd, and even above the average time for a Contra Costa law enforcement fatality investigation since 2018, which is 25 months.

The grand jury recommended reviewing the length of investigations and recommended the District Attorney come to a decision about criminal charges within six months, and that the Sheriff hold inquests within the same timeframe. The report was made before a new state law that requires the Attorney General to investigate when police shoot and kill an unarmed person, a change that has thus far led to investigations taking even longer and created a statewide backlog.

Hall’s former boss, Contra Costa Sheriff David Livingston, has long stood by Hall, calling the decision to charge him “abhorrent” and the day Hall was sentenced a “sad day.” An appeals court upheld Hall’s conviction in a unanimous, 3-0 decision, last year.