Local Leaders gather at the René C. Davidson Courthouse in Oakland on June 18, 2024, to call for the Alameda County district attorney to resentence all death penalty cases in the county. One by one, a California prosecutor eliminated five out of six Black women from the jury pool for a death penalty case in which a white carpet cleaner slayed his client, a young mother.
Their 5-2 decision highlights the complexities of recent moves in court and in the Legislature to address racial bias in capital cases. Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 declared a, writing in his executive order that “death sentences are unevenly and unfairly applied to people of color, people with mental disabilities, and people who cannot afford costly legal representation.”suggesting prosecutors for years excluded potential Black and Jewish jurors based on their identity. That was the root of U.S.
The prosecutors used loaded language during the trial, calling Nadey a “tattooed pervert” and a “tattooed predator.” The Supreme Court ruling acknowledged the prosecutor made some errors in the trial, but it found they did not merit a reversal of the jury’s decision. Today, Nadey is 58 and serving time at a state prison in Vacaville.In a dissent, two justices wrote that the court should have paid more attention to Nadey’s argument that Black women were improperly removed from the jury pool.