The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office has dropped the case it was pursuing against a 57-year-old waiter who was accused of stabbing a man to death during a fight outside the Mineshaft bar in Long Beach last year.
A judge in May ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to support a murder charge, and prosecutors last week chose not to pursue lesser charges, such as manslaughter, saying they do not have enough evidence.
The decision comes after evidence was presented at a pivotal court hearing where defendant Michael Smalls’ attorney argued he was acting in self-defense when he grabbed a knife and stabbed two people while he was being attacked on Sept. 9, 2022.
According to his public defender Christopher Capestro, Smalls was riding his bicycle home from a shift as a server at Parker’s Lighthouse when he saw a man being assaulted outside the Mineshaft, a popular gay bar on Broadway.
At the time, police said the man being assaulted had a Taser and two bystanders were trying to disarm him.
But to Smalls it looked like the man with a Taser was being ganged up on and attacked, so he pulled a knife out of his pocket and stepped in to help, Capestro said.
“(Smalls has) been a victim of violent crime himself so when he saw someone being attacked, that really shook him to his core,” Capestro said. “This event has been devastating to him.”
Nobody was severely injured during the confrontation, and everyone went their separate ways afterward. Smalls, meanwhile, visited a friend who lived next door to the bar, Capestro said.
When Smalls left his friend’s home, he saw one of the bystanders who’d been fighting with the man with the Taser. Smalls approached the man, 28-year-old Christopher Finley, and expressed his displeasure with the way the situation was handled, according to Capestro.
That’s when someone started attacking Smalls, Capestro said. Smalls was assaulted and taken to the ground, Capestro said.
Finley’s partner, Jake Touchstone, testified in court that he saw what was happening and joined in the brawl, kicking and punching Smalls in the head until they felt his body go limp, Capestro said.
When they stopped, Smalls got up and rode away on his bike, Capestro said. Finley and Touchstone, meanwhile, realized they had been stabbed during the ordeal.
The two were transported to a local hospital where Finley died.
Nobody knows when the stabbing occurred, Capestro said. Smalls suspects the knife he had in his pocket fell out as he was being beaten on the ground, Capestro said. Sometime during the fight, Small grabbed the knife and stabbed the two while flailing his arms to try and escape, Capestro said.
Smalls was taken into custody the following evening at his home along Fourth Street, just a mile away from the bar.
Following his arrest, he remained jailed for eight months while facing one count of murder and another count of attempted murder in connection to the stabbing. That is until May when a judge found there wasn’t enough evidence for Smalls to be held to answer for murder and reduced his bail.
The charges were changed to one count each of voluntary manslaughter and attempted voluntary manslaughter and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. Soon after, prosecutors reconsidered the case.
“After the preliminary hearing, the prosecutor assigned to the case requested law enforcement to conduct further investigation to see if we were still able to prove our case beyond a reasonable doubt,” a spokesperson from the DA’s office told the post. “As a result, we were no longer able to prove our case beyond a reasonable doubt, so we announced unable to proceed and the court dismissed the case.”
Capestro says charges should have never been filed in the first place.
“It was always a self-defense, defense of others case,” according to Capestro, who said that Smalls was unfairly portrayed during the case and added that the stabbing was not a hate crime against Finely and his partner.
“Smalls is also an openly gay man,” Capestro said. “What happened was horrible and I know Mr. Smalls. He’s lived in Long Beach his whole life. He’s been a very upstanding citizen, and I know he feels horrible that these events occurred.”