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"Yusef Bey is a coward, I believe he's a coward," Aundra Dixon said.
Dixon believes /*Yusef Bey IV*/, the former leader of Oakland's /*Your Black Muslim Bakery*/, ordered her son to kill /*Chauncey Bailey*/.
For the past two days, during a secret grand jury proceeding in an Oakland courthouse, that is exactly what her son /*Devaughndre Broussard*/ testified to, that he was following Bey's orders in 2007 when he shot the Oakland Post editor as he walked to work.
"What I think is that he's covering up for somebody still, I really have a hard time believing he had something to do with," Dixon said.
Broussard is the only person charged with bailey's murder. Bey, in jail on an unrelated kidnapping case, has denied involvement.
The bakery where Broussard once worked as a handyman is now defunct.
Broussard's lawyer LeRue Grim says his client is seeking redemption.
"He's been in for 14 months, he's had time to think about it all, and he's a person with a conscience and he's, as I see him, seeking redemption," Grim said.
In exchange for the testimony, 20-year-old Broussard struck a plea deal with prosecutors. He will serve a 25 year state prison sentence. He faced life without parole.
"At the end of his time, he gets out, he doesn't have to wait for a parole board to decide that," Grim said.
ABC7 legal analyst Dean Johnson calls it an upside down legal strategy by the prosecution, and says an indictment against Bey is imminent.
"If indeed Broussard is the shooter, to which he admits to being, then we're going the other way, we're using the big fish, the actual killer, to catch the people who allegedly conspired to or solicited the commission of this murder," Johnson said.
Broussard's mother hoped for a different outcome.
"Initially yeah, I thought it was a good thing for him to be involved in something positive, but come to find out it really wasn't so positive," Dixon said.
As part of his plea deal, Broussard also testified to grand jurors that he another man in 2007; he told the grand jury that Bey ordered that killing as well.
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