The case against a San Francisco man accused of attacking a tourist in May was dismissed when a jury came back hung 8-4 in favor of acquitting him on Thursday, according to the public defender’s office.
Tyree Mosley, 29, was accused of beating a 25-year-old Texas man unconscious and stealing his Louis Vuitton wallet with $2,000 in cash in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood before 3 a.m. on May 18.
A taxi driver on the scene called police and followed the assailant but eventually lost sight of him, public defender’s officials said.
The taxi driver told police that the assailant was wearing black and white pants and a gray shirt but had seen the man shed his shirt following the robbery. When he took police to the area where he had last seen the robber, he was no longer there.
He went up the street and spotted Mosley wearing a dark shirt and dark pants and identified him as the robber, according to the public defender’s office.
Mosley was arrested at gunpoint but did not have the stolen items.
Police showed Mosley to the tourist’s 21-year-old girlfriend, also from Texas, and she identified him as the robber as well, public defender’s officials said.
During the trial the tourist couple testified that the attacker had dreadlocks, but Mosley’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Tal Klement, said his client did not have dreadlocks at the time of the attack.
The assailant had punched the male tourist in the face several times during the attack and left him covered in blood, however Mosley was not found with blood on him.
The male victim had a blood alcohol content level of more than 0.20 during the crime, according to the public defender’s office.
In a statement, Klement said, “The case illustrated the well documented problems of mistaken eyewitness identification. There was a complete lack of physical evidence against Mr. Mosley: he did not have any money or the wallet stolen from the victim, and although the victim was covered in blood, Mr. Mosley didn’t have a single drop of blood on him.”
Mosley would have faced eight years in prison if convicted, public defender’s officials said.
Jamey Padojino, Bay City News
