Early attempt to invoke Racial Justice Act denied

New law seeks to empower challenges to convictions on claims that racial bias tainted fairness of court proceedings

An early attempt to invoke a new law designed to root out racism from court proceedings was met with a swift denial in a Santa Clara County courtroom, after a judge shot down a defense motion arguing that she demonstrated racial bias during a robbery trial.

The motion was the county’s first filing citing the California Racial Justice Act — authored by San Jose-based state Assemblymember Ash Kalra — that allows defendants to challenge convictions and sentences by showing that racial bias factored into a charging decision, the running of a trial, or the severity of a sentence.

The motion was sharply rejected by Judge Linda Clark on March 29, after Deputy Public Defender Karina Alvarez asserted at the sentencing for Isaiah Casson that Clark improperly denied the introduction of evidence showing her client’s accuser had used he N-word in past social-media posts.

That usage, Alvarez wrote, supported the defense’s contention that racial animus motivated the victim into embellishing his account, elevating a charge against Casson from a petty theft of marijuana to a robbery. Alvarez argued that Clark’s ruling violated the new law. Casson is Black; Clark is White.

Alvarez’s motion zeroed in on Clark’s Oct. 14, 2020 remarks explaining why she did not see the word usage as relevant, in which she said the victim “has at least two obviously AfricanAmerican friends on Facebook. So I don’t believe the mere use of the term ‘ni***as’ suggests that he is somehow prejudiced, biased or in any other way has any ability to falsify because of Mr. Casson’s race, gender or any other part of his natural makeup.”

The motion included a brief report from Rita Cameron-Wedding, a professor of Women’s and Ethnic Studies at Sacramento State University who challenged Clark’s assessment.

Cameron-Wedding argued that “even a single utterance of this word is toxic and signifies the subordination of black people … whether it’s done in jest, humor or as a quote,” and criticized what she called Clark’s suggestion “that having black friends immunizes the alleged victim from internalizing antiblack biases.”

Clark denied Alvarez’s request that she recuse herself. From there, Deputy District Attorney Mai Tran Buell called the motion “outrageous” and reiterated broad concerns by prosecutors about the Racial Justice Act, centered on a lack of benchmarks for how to prove racial bias not only was present but significantly swayed trial proceedings.

“It’s not based upon any type of evidence that is credible,” Buell said. “It doesn’t include anything but a presentation of important parts of the court transcript taken out of context.” But Alvarez argued that Clark’s ruling, and the way her motion was being heard Monday, was evidence of the matter being evaluated “through a racist lens, if not a lens filled and covered with implicit bias.”

Clark grew impatient at times and ultimately told Alvarez “you have failed to state or show any demonstration how any alleged implicit bias affected this court’s determinations or treatment of your client,” and that her ruling “was not based on any kind of bias, implicit or otherwise.”

Casson, an Oakland resident, had been convicted of robbery involving a May 12, 2020 encounter in San Jose with a marijuana delivery driver. Casson ordered marijuana and refused to pay, and the driver later told police that Casson threatened him by making the shape of a gun underneath his sweatshirt and then took the roughly $150 worth of pot.

Alvarez defended Casson by arguing that while he swiped the marijuana away without paying, the threat story was conjured up because Casson is Black.

In her sentencing Monday, Clark showed a stark shift in tone and was sympathetic to Casson’s troubled upbringing and his stints of sobriety while trying to adhere to rehabilitation programs.

“All of those things taken together with Mr. Casson’s limited successes tells this court he is not such a character that he does not have a prospect of turning things around,” Clark said.