Monday, December 22, 2025

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Ninth Circuit Affirms Murder Conviction for 2020 Shooting Outside Oakland Courthouse

Opinion Says Social Media Posts, Linking Driver of Van From Which Shooter Fired Deadly Rounds at Officers Outside of Federal Building to ‘Boogaloo’ Anarchist Group, Were Properly Admitted

By a MetNews Staff Writer

ROBERT JUSTUS JR.
murderer

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday affirmed the murder and attempted homicide convictions of a man accused of driving the van from which a shooter opened deadly fire on security officers standing guard outside the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Oakland in May 2020, declaring that social media interactions linking him to an extremist group that calls for the overthrow of the government were rightly admitted.

Rejecting the defendant’s assertions that his Facebook posts and messages amounted to improper character evidence, the court found no error in the trial judge’s determination that his affiliation with the movement was probative of the key issue in the case: intent.

Appealing his judgment of conviction was Robert Justus Jr., who claimed that he did not know that the other man, Steven Carrillo, was going to shoot at the security officers on May 29, 2020.

The two men had met online earlier in the month after the defendant posted a flyer promoting a George Floyd protest in the area. Justus had been active on Facebook in the months leading up to the shooting, posting terminology related to the “Boogaloo” movement, an ideology promoting a libertarian revolution and civil war to overthrow the federal government.

After they became friends on the social media website, Justus commented, “Let’s boogie” on one of Carrillo’s posts announcing that the protests were “a great opportunity to target the specialty soup bois” and linking a video showing a large crowd attacking police vehicles. Justus purportedly told a friend that he was going to meet with Carrillo to protest and said they were maybe “gonna play” with some “pews and pops.”

On the night of the deadly shooting, Justus twice left the van and walked around the federal courthouse before any shots were discharged. At 9:41 p.m., he returned to the vehicle, drove past the security guard shack outside the building, and continued driving as Carrillo slid open the rear sliding door and opened fire.

Protective Security Officer Dave Underwood was killed in the incident, and another security employee, identified in court records only as “S.M.,” was permanently disabled. Justus turned himself in after learning that Carrillo had been arrested following a shootout with deputies in Santa Cruz. At trial, the government sought to admit 73 exhibits from Justus’ social media history, including evidence that he had “liked” other users’ posts, to support a theory that the two men pre-planned the attack. Justus objected to the admission of 105 of the posts and six of his conversations on online message platforms.

District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the Northern District of California ultimately excluded only three posts, reasoning that, even though some of the evidence did not explicitly address plans to attack federal buildings, the items “nonetheless traffic in Boogaloo terminology (e.g., the ‘right to boog,’ ‘starting the boog’) and are therefore relevant to Mr. Justus’s ties to the Boogaloo movement and probative of intent.”

After a jury found him guilty on two homicide-related counts, Rogers sentenced him to life in prison in March of last year. Circuit Judge Jacqueline H. Nguyen authored yesterday’s opinion, joined in by Circuit Judge Daniel Aaron Bress and Senior District Court Judge Richard D. Bennett of the District of Maryland, sitting by designation.

Social Media History

Justus objected to the inclusion of the social media history under Federal Rules of Evidence 401 and 403, which together preclude the admission of irrelevant evidence and materials for which the probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of unfair prejudice.

Rejecting the defendant’s assertion that the posts were irrelevant to his intent because they did not include any concrete plans to incite violence, Nguyen opined:

“First, Justus’s advocacy for violence and physical attacks of law enforcement and the courts made it more probable that he intentionally aided Carrillo in the shooting of the officers….Second, the posts in which Justus used ‘Boogaloo’ language supported the government’s theory that Justus participated in the attack to further the…movement.”

She acknowledged that Rogers “did not explicitly discuss Rule 403 in [the] written order regarding the social media evidence,” but said that “the record shows that [she] engaged in this analysis.” Nguyen reasoned:

“The government admitted seventy-three posts and conversations, but they were not redundant. Many of the posts focused on separate issues related to Justus’s intent, including his involvement with the Boogaloo movement, his desire to harm government officials and the courts, and his intent to take specific action and make or use weapons. The evidence was…relevant and admissible.”

Character Evidence

As to the defendant’s assertion that the online history constituted improper evidence under Rule 404, which provides that “[e]vidence of a person’s character or character trait is not admissible to prove that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character or trait,” she wrote:

“The district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that the evidence was not impermissible character evidence because it established Justus’s growing animosity toward the federal government and desire to commit violence against government actors, and not a specific character trait or criminal propensity.”

Nguyen added:

“Further, the evidence was not offered to establish that Justus acted in accordance with a specific character trait….Rather, as the district court found, the evidence was admitted for a non-propensity purpose: to demonstrate Justus’s ‘state of mind’ at the time of the attack. Consequently, the district court properly admitted the evidence under Rule 404.”

The case is U.S. v. Justus, 24-1641.

Carrillo, who was an active-duty U.S. Air Force staff sergeant at the time of the killing, pled guilty to Underwood’s murder in 2022 and was sentenced to 41 years in prison with a lifetime of supervised release.