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March 19, 2005, 6:23PM Jury selection bias is alleged in California death row casesFormer DA says Jews, black women were excluded from some trialsBy DEAN E. MURPHYNew York Times
OAKLAND, CALIF. - The convictions of dozens of death-row inmates in California are coming under legal scrutiny because of accusations that Jews and black women were excluded from juries in capital trials in Alameda County as "standard practice."
A former Alameda County prosecutor, John R. Quatman, made the claims in a sworn declaration filed in the habeas corpus case of Fred H. Freeman, a condemned inmate who is seeking to overturn his 1987 conviction in a killing and robbery at a Berkeley bar. Quatman, who worked 26 years as a deputy district attorney and prosecuted the Freeman case, said the trial judge, Stanley Golde, advised him during jury selection that "no Jew would vote to send a defendant to the gas chamber." "Judge Golde was only telling me what I already should have known to do," Quatman said in the declaration. "It was standard practice to exclude Jewish jurors in death cases," Quatman said the practice also extended to African-American women, who have also been considered sympathetic to defendants, though in the Freeman case that has not been an issue. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that it is illegal to reject jurors on the basis of race, and the California Supreme Court in 1978 extended that prohibition to religion. While habeas corpus petitions typically challenge trial procedures, it is highly unusual for the prosecutor in a case to support the petition. A hearing on Quatman's accusation, ordered by the state Supreme Court in July, is scheduled for Tuesday before a superior court judge in San Jose. If Freeman's lawyers succeed, he would get a new trial. But the repercussions are possibly much broader. Forty-four people from Alameda County are on death row and Golde, who died in 1998 after 25 years on the bench, presided over more death penalty cases in the county than any other judge. At least eight inmates now on death row had trials conducted by Golde.
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