‘Do the Right Thing’: Judge Orders Black Man on California’s Death Row for 33 Years Be Released or Get New Trial Due to Prosecutors’ Alleged Racial Bias

A Black man who’s been on California’s death row for 33 years for murder must either be released or retried due to prosecutorial misconduct in jury selection during his trial, according to an order issued by a federal judge last week. Curtis Lee Ervin, 71, was convicted in 1991 in Alameda County for a 1986 murder-for-hire and sentenced to death. In subsequent appeals, his attorneys argued that prosecutors illegally excluded African-Americans from his jury panel, violating his constitutional rights. The California Supreme Court denied his appeal in 2000, ruling that prosecutors had valid reasons to strike nine of 11 prospective Black jurors and that doing so was not a violation under Batson v. Kentucky, landmark case law which holds that using peremptory challenges to remove potential jurors based on race, sex or ethnicity violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Curtis Lee Ervin (Photo: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) But a recent review of the case by California Attorney General Rob Bonta led him to concede that the court should have found Batson violations in Ervin’s case. At Bonta’s request, on Aug. 1, U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria ordered the state to release Ervin from prison...