Dozens of Alameda County death sentences must be reviewed after prosecutors intentionally excluded black and Jewish jurors during a 1995 murder trial, a federal judge ordered.
Handwritten notes from prosecutors in the decades-old case suggest the attorneys were involved in “gross misconduct,” but Alameda County Dist. Atty. Pamela Price said Monday that additional evidence suggests more death penalty cases may have been tainted by prosecutors trying to keep black and Jewish jurors from participating in murder trials.
“It’s not limited to one or two prosecutors, but a variety of prosecutors,” Price said at a news conference Monday. “The evidence we uncovered clearly suggests that many people did not receive a fair trial in Alameda County and, therefore, we must review all records. »
The order was issued by U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria after the discovery of prosecutors’ notes in the case of Earnest Dykes, who was convicted in 1993 in the death of a 9-year-old child during an attempted theft. He was sentenced to death.
Dykes’ motion to review his case has been pending in Federal Court for years.
“These notes – especially when considered in conjunction with evidence presented in other cases – constitute strong evidence that, over the preceding decades, the office’s prosecutors engaged in a pattern of serious misconduct, automatically excluding Jewish and African-American jurors in death penalty cases. ” Chhabria wrote in a decision to make the notes public.
In part of the notes released by the prosecutor’s office, prosecutors wrote and underlined the word “Jew” about a potential juror in the case.
Price did not elaborate on the evidence prosecutors uncovered in the cases reviewed, but said it included notes as well as transcripts of questions asked of prospective jurors.
Alameda prosecutors are not the only officials in the county’s criminal justice system who have been accused of improperly excluding people from a jury. In 2006, the California Supreme Court rejected allegations that an Alameda County Superior Court judge advised a prosecutor to remove Jewish jurors from a death penalty trial.
Lawyers are allowed to remove a certain number of potential jurors from a case, but are not allowed to do so based on their race, gender or religion.
The Alameda County Prosecutor’s Office has identified 35 death penalty cases dating back to 1977 that are currently under review, Price said. If other issues are discovered, the review could be expanded to include other cases not involving the death penalty, she said.
Price, a former civil rights and defense attorney, was elected Alameda County district attorney in 2022 after pledging to reform the criminal justice system and hold police accountable. She now faces a recall campaign.
Price said Monday that the decision to reexamine the cases was not just an order issued by a federal judge, but a matter of ethics.
“It’s not about left or right, or any kind of politics,” she said Monday. “It’s a question of ethics.”
Because of the uncovered evidence, she explained, the office has a duty to review all cases in the county that resulted in a death sentence, but the sentence has not yet been carried out.
“It’s horrible,” said Michael Collins, senior director of Color Of Change, a civil rights nonprofit. “The prosecutors and judges involved in this scandal engaged in racist and anti-Semitic practices and sent people to their deaths. »
Color Of Change is one of several organizations involved in the Alameda County DA Accountability Table, a coalition of groups seeking to address criminal justice issues in the region.
“For too long, prosecutors have sought to win at all costs, even if that means engaging in constitutional violations, civil rights violations, and anti-Semitic and racially disparate practices that result in death sentences,” he said. Collins said.
Collins said Color Of Change supported the review and he praised Price for speaking out publicly about it. He said the organization is also calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to open a civil rights investigation.
Price said his office was in contact with Dykes’ attorneys about how to proceed in his case, but that discussions were still ongoing. “We don’t know yet what is appropriate,” she said.
Dykes, who was 20 at the time, was convicted of murdering 9-year-old Lance Clark and trying to kill the boy’s grandmother, Bernice Clark, during an attempted robbery, according to court records.
He was unemployed when he tried to rob Clark, who owned the building he lived in, according to court records.
The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office also contacts victims and survivors in cases affected by the federal review order, Price said.
“We recognize how terrible this is and it’s something we need to fix,” she said.
California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on the death penalty in 2019, but hundreds of people remain on the state’s death row.
California Daily Newspapers
