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USA - California. Prosecutors excluded Jewish and Black jurors
April 22, 2024: April 22, 2024 - California. Prosecutors excluded Jewish and Black jurors
Pamela Price, the Alameda county district attorney, whose jurisdiction includes Oakland, is reviewing 35 death penalty cases after judge cites ‘pattern of misconduct’
Price announced Monday that her office had uncovered handwritten notes by former prosecutors documenting discriminatory jury selection tactics in the 1990s.
Evidence of what appears to be the exclusion of Jewish and Black jurors was found during the resentencing settlement of Earnest Dykes. US Federal Court Judge Vince Chhabria, who is overseeing Dykes’ case, has directed Price’s office to conduct the review of other cases, she said.
Chhabria wrote in an order on Monday that the “notes – especially when considered in conjunction with evidence presented in other cases – constitute strong evidence that, in prior decades, prosecutors from the office were engaged in a pattern of serious misconduct, automatically excluding Jewish and African American jurors in death penalty cases”.
Price said her office has identified 35 cases that could be impacted and that it will review “for any signs of being tainted by prosecutorial misconduct”. It’s unclear what timeframe the cases cover, but Price said the office was potentially looking as far back as 1977.
The revelations come as California’s governor has issued a moratorium on executions and has moved to shutter the state’s infamous death row facilities, transferring people with death sentences to the general population of prisons. The district attorney in nearby Santa Clara county also recently moved to resentence all of the men on death row in his jurisdiction, saying he was “not confident that these sentences were attained without racial bias”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/22/california-death-penalty-cases-review-juror-discrimination#:~:text=Prosecutors%20in%20California%20excluded%20Jewish%20and%20Black%20jurors%2C%20records%20suggest,-Pamela%20Price%2C%20the&text=A%20California%20district%20attorney's%20office,Black%20jurors%20from%20capital%20trials.
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2024/04/da-will-review-all-alameda-death-penalty-cases-after-prosecutors-discover-evidence-of-prosecutorial-misconduct-exclusion-of-jews-and-blacks-from-jury-service/ (Source: The Guardian, 22/04/2024)
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