Appeals Court Finds Contra Costa Prosecutor’s Dismissal of Black Woman from Jury Pool Was ‘Plainly Tied to Race,’ Overturns 2016 Double Murder Conviction

East Bay Times

By Nate Gartrell

September 17, 2021

SAN FRANCISCO — In a major decision that accuses Contra Costa County prosecutors of racism during the jury selection process, an appeals court has overturned the 2016 double murder convictions of three men who had been sentenced to life in the shooting deaths of an East Bay couple.

The 70-page decision, issued Friday, says that the lead prosecutor in the murder trial of Sheldon Silas, Reginald Whitley, and Lamar Michaels dismissed a 25-year-old Black woman from the jury pool for reasons that “were plainly tied to race, and in particular to the prosecutor’s negative preconceptions of the (Black Lives Matter) movement.” The prosecutor was “inappropriate” in her questioning of the woman’s support for Black Lives Matter, according to the court.

The unanimous decision by Division One of the First Appellate District of California says that then-Deputy District Attorney Melissa Smith’s questioning of Potential Juror 275 — the woman is not named in court records — was “inappropriate.” It rejects Smith’s reasoning that the woman had a “myriad of anti-prosecution issues,” and reverses trial Judge Clare Maier’s ruling against a defense motion that asked her to find Smith was being discriminatory.

“Given the prosecutor’s inappropriate questioning about Black Lives Matter, the absence of any clear and legitimate nondiscriminatory reasons for striking Juror 275, and the evidence of at least some historical discrimination by the prosecutor and other district attorneys in her office, the court’s finding that defendants failed to establish a prima facie case of discrimination lacked substantial evidence,”  Presiding Justice Jim Humes wrote in the decision.