"When Pamela Price was sworn in as Alameda County District Attorney in 2023, she promised a " reckoning" with the criminal legal system's injustices, including police and prosecutorial misconduct. And she brought a new philosophy to the DA's office, focusing on rehabilitation instead of punishment for youth, and reducing the use of prosecutorial tools like enhancements - additional charges that add time to defendants' sentences."
"Price's agenda came to the fore last year when a federal judge overturned the death sentence of Curtis Ervin because Alameda County prosecutors had engaged in misconduct during his trial in 1991. Another man, Ernest Dykes, who was convicted of murder in 1995, was resentenced and freed from prison last year following the discovery of more evidence of prosecutorial misconduct."
"The resentencing motions filed by Price's office were anchored not only in Chhabria's order and the Batson case, which the Supreme Court decided in 1986, but also in a 2020 state law, the Racial Justice Act, that seeks to eliminate racial disparities in the criminal legal system. In passing the Racial Justice Act, the legislature recognized that California's courts have been shaped by systemically racist features for decades, with Black people, Latinos, and other defendants of color disproportionately charged with more serious crimes, including murder, and sentenced to death at higher rates."
Pamela Price became Alameda County District Attorney in 2023 with a focus on confronting police and prosecutorial misconduct, reducing sentence-enhancing tools, and emphasizing rehabilitation for youth. Her office pursued resentencing and reversal of convictions after discoveries of prosecutorial misconduct, including a federal judge overturning a death sentence and the release of a resentenced man. Those motions relied on federal rulings and California's 2020 Racial Justice Act, which recognizes systemic racial disparities in charging and sentencing that have disproportionately impacted Black people, Latinos, and other defendants of color. Subsequent leadership change followed Price's recall.
Read at The Oaklandside
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