MARTINEZ — A Rodeo man was acquitted of murder but convicted of voluntary manslaughter for killing his half-brother in 2022, an act he testified at trial was done in self-defense.
Joseph Gladney, 26, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter with an enhancement for personal use of a firearm in the shooting death of 25-year-old Vinson Bragg, as well as a charge of threatening to kill another half-brother who lived in the family home. The surviving half-brother was so scared of Gladney’s threat that he jumped from a second-story window, breaking both his legs, then crawled on his stomach to safety, prosecutors said.
Gladney remains jailed in Contra Costa, and is set to be sentenced in November, court records show.
At the end of trial last Thursday, Gladney’s lawyer argued that Bragg shot at Gladney, who went to the Rodeo home in a folly attempt to reconcile after their relationship had totally disintegrated. The defense attorney, Michael Caesar, told jurors that Bragg became enraged after Gladney outed him as a gay man, and sought revenge.
The prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Kate Jewett, argued that Gladney was the one who was enraged, and that the homicide was committed with an unregistered AR-15 likely manufactured by Gladney himself. She said Gladney went to Rodeo on June 14, 2022 seeking revenge after he’d been kicked out of the family home — located on the 1200 block of Mariposa Street — and brought the gun with him to settle a score.
The two half-brothers had argued frequently, taunted one another online, and called each other derogatory names, both sides agreed. But Jewett denied there was any evidence Gladney had outed Bragg, calling that a concoction used to bolster the self-defense theory. She argued that Bragg — who was set to go to Alaska for a job opportunity the day after he was killed — wouldn’t have risked that by attacking his brother with a gun. Gladney, by contrast, had told neighbors “Vinson’s not going to Alaska,” she said.
“They didn’t know how serious he was at the time, but now they do,” Jewett said. She said after killing Bragg, he found his second brother and told him, “you’re next.”
Caesar argued that Gladney told jurors the truth when he testified for two days and recounted that he invited Bragg to share an alcoholic beverage, and that things quickly devolved. He testified Bragg shot at him first but that he couldn’t remember crucial parts of what happened next.
“There can be no doubt that this is a man with deep regrets, telling the truth about these events on the worst day of his life,” Caesar said.