A man who was released from prison less than a year and a half before allegedly gunning down his own cousin in Oakland has now been convicted of second-degree murder in that killing. Clarence Johnson Jr., 38, was found guilty in the Aug. 18, 2021, shooting death of 33-year-old Dellmor Brown, a crime prosecutors say erupted after Brown insulted Johnson's height and body type. Jurors acquitted him of first-degree murder but convicted him of the lesser charge along with gun enhancements.
Johnson faces life in prison with no chance of parole for decades because of the murder conviction and firearm enhancements, according to The Mercury News. He has not yet been sentenced and remains jailed without bail. The verdict closes out a case that has stretched more than five years since the predawn shooting on Oakland's MacArthur Boulevard.
A Video Call Cut Short
Brown was shot at around 4:45 a.m. while on a video call with a woman, the outlet's report states. She said Brown cried out and dropped his phone after being shot, and that another person picked it up. His phone was later found about 100 feet down the street from the 2800 block of MacArthur Boulevard, and a gun containing Johnson's DNA turned up within a few blocks of the shooting scene.
Prosecutors said the fatal confrontation followed a day Brown had spent with Johnson, during which tension had built between the two men. According to the account, Brown told Johnson “do it then” after calling him short and skinny, moments before the shooting. Johnson's attorney countered that the exchange amounted to horseplay rather than a lethal threat.
Caught Fleeing Toward the Southwest
Johnson was arrested five days after the murder at a Greyhound bus station in Tucson, Arizona. The Mercury News reported he was traveling toward El Paso, Texas, at the time of his capture, though an earlier report from KTVU stated he was preparing to leave Tucson on a bus bound for Arkansas. The discrepancy over his intended destination has not been resolved in the available reporting.
A Parole Violation Tied to an Earlier Killing
At the time of Brown's killing, Johnson had been out of prison for roughly a year and a half. He was paroled in April 2020 after serving about 10 years of a 13-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter in the 2010 killing of 32-year-old Howard Brooks Jr. in Antioch. That earlier case began, per the same account, when Johnson asked Brooks for a cigarette at a local Bonfare Market, and Brooks responded, “Do it look like I'm in a f—ing mood to give you a cigarette?” Brooks went on to confront Johnson and a friend near a Mexican restaurant, and Johnson later confessed to killing him in self-defense, according to court records cited in the report.
Johnson had initially denied involvement in anything more than an argument with Brooks, and The East Bay Times reported he was originally charged with murder in that January 2010 case before Contra Costa prosecutors dropped the charge in exchange for a no-contest plea to voluntary manslaughter, a deal that produced the 13-year sentence. The same outlet's earlier coverage noted that Johnson was wanted for an alleged parole violation tied to that manslaughter conviction at the time he was charged in Brown's killing.
With sentencing still pending, the case underscores how a decade-old plea deal in Antioch preceded a second violent death years later in Oakland. Johnson now awaits a sentencing hearing that, per the murder conviction and enhancements, could keep him behind bars for decades.
