California Supreme Court Decisions on Racial Justice Act Claims Limit Relief from Racial Bias

Recent deci­sions from California’s Supreme Court have nar­rowed the scope of the state’s Racial Justice Act (RJA), lim­it­ing a law aimed at elim­i­nat­ing racial bias from the judi­cial sys­tem and poten­tial­ly mak­ing it hard­er for those on death row to seek relief through the statute mov­ing for­ward. Though the court over­turned the death sen­tence of Anthony Bankston, who was repeat­ed­ly referred to as a ​“thug” and com­pared to a Bengal tiger by the pros­e­cu­tor, this opin­ion, along with three oth­er deci­sions, restricts the RJA’s abil­i­ty to apply to cap­i­tal cas­es that pre­date January 1^st, 2021, when the law was enacted. 

The RJA’s stat­ed aim is to elim­i­nate bias based on race, eth­nic­i­ty, and nation­al ori­gin from California’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. This includes both inten­tion­al and implic­it bias, as the law express­ly rejects the U.S. Supreme Court’s opin­ion in McCleskey v. Kemp (1987), where the court con­clud­ed that racial dis­par­i­ties are ​“an inevitable part of our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.” Rather, the RJA offers poten­tial relief in cas­es where racial bias is deter­mined to have occurred and pre­vents the state from seek­ing the death penal­ty a sec­ond time if an RJA vio­la­tion affect­ed the ini­tial sentencing phase. 

However, in Mr. Bankston’s case, the court broad­ly inter­pret­ed sub­sec­tion (k) of the RJA, which states that for peti­tions in cas­es orig­i­nat­ing before 2021, RJA claims must estab­lish that racial bias affect­ed the jury’s deci­sion-mak­ing. This stan­dard places a high­er bur­den on defen­dants than the RJA’s broad­er pro­hi­bi­tion of racial bias. While the court deter­mined that the vio­la­tions in Mr. Bankston’s case could have affect­ed the jury’s judg­ment, it reached the oppo­site con­clu­sion in the case of Alex Demolle, a Black man sen­tenced to death in 2007. Referred to as a ​“wolf in sheep’s cloth­ing” by the pros­e­cu­tor, Mr. Demolle’s claims were reject­ed despite the RJA’s explic­it pro­hi­bi­tion on ani­mal imagery to describe defen­dants. The major­i­ty also ruled that the RJA could not pro­hib­it pros­e­cu­tors from seek­ing the death penal­ty a sec­ond time because doing so would uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly amend California’s constitution. 

Across these cas­es, Associate Justices Goodwin Liu and Kelli Evans broke with the major­i­ty, argu­ing that the court’s inter­pre­ta­tion mis­un­der­stood the nature of the bias the RJA aims to pre­vent. Noting how implic­it stereo­types can shift how the jury eval­u­ates the evi­dence, Justice Liu spoke out against the court’s deci­sion in Mr. Demolle’s case, saying: 

In enact­ing the RJA, the Legislature could not have been clear­er: ​‘Use of ani­mal imagery in ref­er­ence to a defen­dant is racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and should not be per­mit­ted in our court sys­tem’… the Legislature did not intend that courts nar­row the RJA’s pro­hi­bi­tion on ani­mal com­par­isons with com­par­ing a Black defen­dant to a vio­lent, preda­to­ry ani­mal, of what­ev­er species and in what­ev­er man­ner, [it] ​‘car­ries sig­nif­i­cant risks of dehu­man­iza­tion, moral exclu­sion, and unfair­ly harsh pun­ish­ment’. 

In the case of Marcos Barrera, a Latino man sen­tenced to death in 2001, the court sim­i­lar­ly reject­ed an RJA claim regard­ing an expert who tes­ti­fied that Mr. Barrera’s undoc­u­ment­ed immi­gra­tion sta­tus made him more like­ly to abuse his chil­dren. In uphold­ing his death sen­tence, the major­i­ty argued that this tes­ti­mo­ny would not have swayed the jury’s deci­sion-mak­ing con­sid­er­ing the sever­i­ty of his charges. However, in a dis­sent­ing opin­ion, Justice Evans argued that rather than a fac­tu­al judg­ment, jury deci­sion-mak­ing in death sen­tences is ​“moral and nor­ma­tive.” As she con­tin­ued, jurors are nev­er in any case required to vote for the death penal­ty, and thus the court’s judg­ment ignored that defen­dants may receive con­sid­er­a­tions based on ​“com­pas­sion­ate or mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors stem­ming from the diverse frail­ties of humankind.” In her dis­sent, Justice Evans also cit­ed McCleskey v. Kemp (1987), a deci­sion the RJA rejects as an insuf­fi­cient stan­dard in root­ing out racial bias. Echoing U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan’s dis­sent in that case, Justice Evans argued that the court’s adop­tion of a harm­less­ness stan­dard sim­i­lar­ly reflects a ​“fear of too much justice.” 

Mr. Barrera, Mr. Demolle, and Run Peter Chhuon, whose RJA claims were also reject­ed, all remain on California’s death row.