05 August 2020 :
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit voted 2-1 to grant a new trial to Marvin Walker, who has been on the state’s death row for 40 years. The court ruled that Santa Clara County prosecutors had impermissibly exercised their discretionary jury strikes on the basis of race to remove all three Black potential jurors from service in the case. Walker was sentenced to death in Santa Clara County on September 8, 1980 for the August 6, 1979 murder of a clerk, Joseph Vazquez, 15, and the wounding of two other employees at a San Jose liquor store in a robbery. Walker also was convicted of assaulting, robbing and critically wounding 20-year-old Rosa Olveda during a separate holdup at a San Jose medical center.
(Sources: DPIC, 31/07/2020
