California's Department of Justice has decided it will not pursue criminal charges against the four Martinez police officers who fatally shot 20-year-old Tahmon Wilson outside a cannabis dispensary in August 2023, concluding the evidence could not support a prosecution. The decision closes the state's criminal review of a shooting that also wounded Wilson's older brother and that later led Martinez to fire three of its own officers over how the incident and its aftermath were handled.
The California Department of Justice said plainly in its report that “the evidence does not support filing criminal charges in this case,” according to contracosta.news. The shooting happened after Martinez officers responded to a call about an attempted break-in at Velvet Dispensary on Sunrise Drive on August 18, 2023, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Four officers — Cole Bennett, Marc Kahue, Raul Ceja-Mendez and Alexander Tirona — were identified as having opened fire, per the CBS News Bay Area report on the case.
Wilson died at the scene, while his brother, Tommy Wilson Jr., 22, was injured in the same encounter, the Chronicle's earlier coverage noted. Officers fired a total of 30 rounds during the confrontation, according to a Mercury News account of the state's findings. Local News Matters reported that the DOJ's announcement framed the officers as having acted in self-defense, with the state finding insufficient evidence to move forward with prosecution.
Why Prosecutors Said Their Hands Were Tied
The DOJ's report explained that a criminal case would have required proving the officers fired without an actual belief that deadly force was necessary to prevent serious harm or death — a bar prosecutors said they could not clear. “A prosecution, therefore, could not prove that the officers fired their weapons in the absence of an actual belief that deadly force was necessary to prevent serious physical harm or death,” the report stated, as detailed by the Mercury News report.
Even while declining to charge the officers, the state flagged problems with how the shooting unfolded. The DOJ identified eight recommendations tied to the incident, including a call for additional training on deadly force involving moving vehicles and vehicle occupants, the same contracosta.news report noted. The findings illustrate a now-familiar split in California officer-involved shooting cases: a legal conclusion that charges aren't warranted, paired with policy criticism aimed at preventing a repeat.
Three Officers Fired Over Misconduct in the Case
The criminal clearance is separate from discipline Martinez has already handed down. The Martinez Police Department fired three officers earlier over misconduct tied to the investigation of the 2023 incident, the department's own personnel actions show. Administrative investigations determined that officer Giani Arone's knee strikes against Wilson's brother amounted to excessive force, and that officers acted improperly in an effort to conceal a knife connected to the case, according to the Chronicle's reporting on the firings.
That distinction — a criminal review clearing the officers while an internal inquiry found enough wrongdoing to end three careers — underscores how differently the same set of facts can be judged depending on which standard is applied. The DOJ's criminal threshold asks whether prosecutors could disprove a claim of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt; the department's internal review asked only whether officers violated policy.
Federal Lawsuit Still Pending
Wilson's family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit over his death and his brother's injuries, and that case remains active with a trial tentatively scheduled for September 2027, the Mercury News reported. The criminal review's conclusion does not resolve the civil litigation, which proceeds under its own separate legal standard.
The case is one of several recent California officer-involved shooting reviews conducted under AB 1506, the state law that created an independent, statewide prosecutor's process to investigate shootings involving unarmed civilians, according to the California Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General. Similar declinations to charge have surfaced elsewhere in the state this year, including reviews touching on shootings in other California communities, though the specifics of each case differ.
