Hearing postponed for former Your Black Muslim Bakery leader

Yusuf Bey IV (Oakland Police Department)

Yusuf Bey IV (Oakland Police Department)

By Thomas Peele, The Chauncey Bailey Project

OAKLAND — A hearing to determine whether former Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV should be limited in his efforts to serve as his own attorney in a real estate fraud case was postponed Friday because the judge wasn’t ready to proceed.

Superior Court Judge Robert McGuiness told Bey IV that because courts were closed Thursday afternoon as a precaution following the verdict in the BART shooting trial, he had not yet read all the legal papers submitted in the matter. McGuiness rescheduled the hearing for July 20.

Prosecutors want to limit Bey IV’s ability to make unmonitored telephone calls while acting as his own lawyer in the real estate case, one of several pending against him. He is being investigated on suspicion of ordering witnesses killed in an unrelated upcoming triple murder trial. Prosecutors wrote in legal papers that if Bey IV is allowed to represent himself in the fraud case, McGuiness should assign a lawyer to work with him and not allow unmonitored phone calls so Bey IV cannot give orders to his followers.

One of Bey IV’s followers, Gary Popoff, is being investigated on suspicion of plotting to kill witnesses after receiving a court transcript on which Bey IV is suspected of highlighting the names of witnesses he wanted killed.

According to an affidavit written by a District Attorney’s inspector, the transcript was smuggled out of the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin in March by Bey IV’s former lawyer, Lorna Patton Brown.