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A San Francisco police officer on trial in Oakland Superior Court has been found innocent of charges he battered his girlfriend in her Berkeley home and then tied her hands together with a device the pair used during sex.  

A jury hearing the misdemeanor criminal case against 52-year-old motorcycle officer James McKeever returned “not guilty” verdicts on both charges shortly after 11 a.m. Thursday, after deliberating for four hours. 

“We’re exceedingly happy,” said defense attorney Michael Cardoza. “It was a verdict of 12 people from the community saying ‘we don’t believe what happened,’” he said. “They did the right thing.”  

McKeever was arrested in the morning on Aug. 7 at an apartment on Seventh Street in west Berkeley after an altercation with the alleged victim, a 36-year-old woman with whom he has admitted having an extramarital affair. McKeever claimed he acted in self defense. 

The four-day trial before Judge Carlos G. Ynostroza became a battle of dueling stories about the nature of their relationship and what transpired that midsummer night. 

“These types of cases are hard where it’s one person’s word against another person’s word,” said Oakland Deputy District Attorney Tara Desautels, who prosecuted the case. “It comes down to a question of credibility,” she said. “Unfortunately for the victim in this case, (the jury) didn’t think it was enough.”  

Carmia Caesar, a staff attorney with the Family Violence Law Center in Berkeley who represents the alleged victim in the case, expressed disappointment with the verdict. “Of course we’re disappointed,” she said. “If someone violates the law and threatens the safety of a citizen we have a system of justice that’s set up, ideally, to punish them,” she said. 

Despite his acquittal Thursday, McKeever’s legal battles are far from over. He faces continuing legal proceedings in Berkeley, San Francisco and Texas. 

McKeever will appear for a restraining order hearing on Feb. 2 in Berkeley Superior Court that could jeopardize his career with the police department. Federal law prohibits anyone who is the subject of a restraining order from carrying a firearm.  

“If the restraining order is put into effect with the gun prohibition he loses his job,” defense attorney Cardoza said in an interview Thursday. McKeever, a motorcycle officer who joined the police force in 1975, is currently on desk duty.  

Cardoza said he would agree to a three-year restraining order if it did not include a firearms prohibition. Caesar declined to comment whether her office would agree to such an arrangement.  

McKeever also faces a hearing before the San Francisco Police Commission, which will hear evidence on the Berkeley incident and could terminate him from the force, or take no action at all. McKeever was briefly suspended from the force in September but reinstated a week later. 

But McKeever’s greatest remaining legal challenge is a felony case pending against him in Texas. That prosecution stems from an incident at the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport two weeks after his Berkeley arrest in which McKeever is alleged to have twice struck his 13-year-old stepdaughter in the face while waiting to board a Delta Airlines flight to San Francisco. The teenager and her younger sister attended part of the trial in Oakland along with several other of McKeever’s family members. 

McKeever has been charged with felony injury to a child by the Tarrant County, Texas district attorney.  

Oakland DA Desautels said she had been in contact with authorities handling the McKeever prosecution in Texas, but would not elaborate.  

According to Cardoza, Texas police only arrested McKeever when they checked his name against a criminal database and discovered the Berkeley arrest for domestic violence. “They probably would have blown by it otherwise,” Cardoza said. 

“I haven’t heard anything like that,” Desautels said about Cardoza’s comments.  

Desautels would not comment whether a plea bargain had been offered to McKeever before trial, saying only “There was no agreement.”  

She said the Oakland DA’s office did not hesitate to prosecute the 26-year veteran of the San Francisco police force, despite the dependence of prosecutors on police testimony to secure criminal convictions. 

“We reviewed this case as we do every case in terms of evaluating the victim, the defendant and the witnesses,” she said. “We wouldn’t have gone forward unless we believed in the case.”