Ex- NFL Player Dana Stubblefield’s Conviction for Rape Is Overturned by an Appeals Court

After concluding that prosecutors made racially prejudiced remarks during the Black man’s trial, a California appeals court reversed the rape conviction of former San Francisco 49er Dana Stubblefield.The former football star was found guilty of raping a lady with developmental disabilities in 2015, whom authorities claimed he enticed to his house with the pretext of a babysitting job. In October 2020, he was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.Prosecutors were found to have violated the California Racial Justice Act of 2020, which was passed during protests over George Floyd’s death, by the Sixth Court of Appeals on Wednesday. The law prohibits prosecutors from using race as a reason for a criminal conviction or sentencing.Before the statute, defendants wishing to contest their convictions on the grounds of racial bias had to establish “purposeful discrimination,” which was a challenging legal threshold to satisfy.The appeals court ruled that prosecutors had to reverse Stubblefield’s conviction because they had used “racially discriminatory language.” Kenneth Rosenfeld, Stubblefield’s primary lawyer, claimed that the case was “infected with tremendous error from the minute we started the trial.”He is still being held until a hearing the following week when his lawyers will request that a court grant...