In a ruling that calls into question numerous death penalty convictions in Alameda County, a federal judge found “strong evidence” that prosecutors there made a conscious effort to keep people off of juries based on their race and religion.
A Monday order by U.S. District Judge Vincent Chhabria suggests evidence of this systemic racism and anti-semitism was hiding in plain sight, within the case file for a death row inmate named Ernest Dykes, in the form of prosecution notes from Dykes’ 1995 jury trial. It was only brought to Chhabria’s attention in 2023, by a county prosecutor who was assigned to review Dykes’ conviction.
“These 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,” Chhabria wrote in his Monday ruling that lifts a protective order on the notes in question.
District Attorney Pamela Price — who ran in 2022 on a platform that including pledging to root out “corruption” in the DA’s office — issued a statement Monday pledging to review all death penalty convictions for racism and anti-semitism.
“Any practice by prosecutors to eliminate potential jurors based on their race betrays that core pillar of the criminal justice system,” Price said.
Dykes was convicted in 1995 of murdering 9-year-old Lance Clark, the grandson of a local landlord Dykes was attempting to rob. In an interview with police, he admitted to the attempted robbery but claimed the gun accidentally went off during a struggle, according to court papers filed in his 2009 appeal.
“I didn’t mean for it to go down like that,” Dykes allegedly told police. “I’m no killer.”
After his conviction, jurors sentenced him to death.
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