Crime & Safety
Gregory Elarms Pleads No Contest to Weapons Charges
The former Hillsdale Shopping Center murder suspect, who once was eligible for the death penalty, now faces up to four years in prison.
The man previously accused of fatally shooting another man outside a San Mateo mall in 2010 has pleaded no contest to weapons charges stemming from his time in jail on the murder charge.
Gregory Elarms, 60, on Thursday pleaded no contest to felony possession of weapons while in San Mateo County Jail awaiting his murder trial, San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said Friday.
Elarms had previously faced a special circumstance murder charge in connection with the June 9, 2010, killing, in which Elarms allegedly shot his acquaintence David Lewis once in the stomach with a .44-caliber handgun, fatally wounding him.
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Jury selection for the murder trial was under way when, on Nov. 6, 2012, Judge Stephen Hall presented a written ruling dismissing the murder charge and charge that Lewis was a felon in possession of a firearm.
According to the court, San Mateo police had obtained Elarms' confession to the murder in violation of his Miranda rights, and thus the confession was inadmissible at trial.
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District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, however, said the district attorney's office believes the decision was "erroneous" and that Elarms' confession was properly obtained by the San Mateo Police Department, and prosecutors would appeal the judge's decision.
Elarms, who pleaded not guilty to the murder in October 2012, had previously been found incompetent to stand trial and was even sent to a state hospital following his arrest.
Following the dismissal of the murder charge, however, Elarms remained in custody on a separate case charging him with three counts of felony possession of weapons in the county jail in connection with the three "shanks."
Prosecutors say the "shanks" were a sharpened toothbrush, a sharpened spork and two sharpened pencils tied together to work as a stabbing instrument.
On the condition of Elarms' no contest plea to all three counts of felony possession of weapons, he faces up to four years in prison.
He has remained in custody in lieu of $500,000, which the court
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