A DA kept Black women off a jury. California’s Supreme Court says that wasn’t racial bias

By Shaanth Nanguneri (CALMATTERS) – One by one, a California prosecutor eliminated five of out six Black women from the jury pool for a death penalty case in which a white carpet cleaner slayed his client, a young mother. The attorney in Alameda County had a reason for each dismissal. He believed one, for instance, appeared too reluctant to impose a death sentence. Another had a “liberal bent.” After the defense struck the last Black woman, the jury proceeded with no Black members even though Black people made up close to 15% of Alameda County’s population at the time. That jury in February 2000 found Giles Albert Nadey guilty of murdering and sodomizing 24-year-old Terena Fermenick, and it sent him to death row. Twenty-four years later, the Alameda District Attorney’s office is in the hot seat for allegedly striking Black and Jewish people from juries around the time of Nadey’s sentencing. A federal judge two months ago ordered it to review all of its death penalty cases to look for signs of racial bias. In Nadey’s case, however, the California Supreme Court this week found that the prosecutor had valid reasons to dismiss the Black jurors. It upheld his sentence...