The Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price has announced that all death penalty cases in the California county are undergoing review after evidence was found that prosecutors in a 30-year-old case had excluded Black and Jewish individuals from the jury. This exclusion of potential jurors based on race, religion, or other protected categories is a violation of the Constitution, according to Price. The case in question involves Ernest Dykes, who was sentenced to death in 1995 for the attempted murder of Bernice Clark and the murder of her 9-year-old grandson during an attempted robbery in 1993. Dykes has been arguing that he did not receive a fair trial.
While reviewing Dykes’ case file, a deputy district attorney discovered handwritten notes by prosecutors that indicated the intentional exclusion of Jewish and Black female jurors from the jury pool. This evidence was promptly disclosed to the defense and U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, who is overseeing the appeal for Dykes. Chhabria noted that this discovery, along with similar evidence from other cases, suggests a pattern of serious misconduct by prosecutors in prior decades in automatically excluding certain jurors from death penalty cases. As a result, Price has been directed to review all death penalty cases in the county for prosecutorial misconduct, with 35 cases identified so far.
The potential misconduct in these cases may date back as far as 1977 and involve multiple prosecutors over the decades, according to Price. She noted that the notes made by prosecutors indicated the identification and exclusion of Jewish and Black jurors based on their ethnicity, which also has transcripts detailing how some jurors were questioned. While prosecutors and defense attorneys are permitted to strike jurors without giving a reason, they are prohibited from doing so based on ethnicity, gender, race, or religion. Price, a former civil rights lawyer, took office in 2023 after pledging not to seek the death penalty and is currently facing a recall election amidst criticism of being soft on crime.
A 2020 report by the Death Penalty Information Center showed that Black individuals have been overrepresented on death rows across the U.S., highlighting broader issues within the criminal justice system. Price emphasized that the review of these death penalty cases is not about politics but rather about ethics and ensuring that individuals accused of crimes receive a fair trial. The findings of prosecutorial misconduct in the exclusion of jurors based on race and religion raise serious concerns about the integrity of the criminal justice system in Alameda County. As the review continues, efforts are being made to address these issues and ensure that justice is served in these cases.
