Racial bias in courts targeted
Bill would challenge sentencing, conviction if discrimination proved
Californians with past criminal convictions would gain a new avenue to clear their records if they can show racial bias affected their arrest or sentencing under a proposed law sponsored by a former public defender.
The bill by Assemblyman Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, would represent a retroactive expansion of an existing new law that empowers criminal defendants currently in court to object to punishment if they’re able to show that anyone involved in their case — a judge, attorney, officer, witness or juror — demonstrated bias during the process.
The proposal would let attorneys, if they have such tangible evidence, raise such incidents as proof of discrimination to then challenge the sentencing and conviction of their clients.
“The opportunity for us to do everything we can to root racism out of our criminal justice system should be an obligation of all lawmakers,” Kalra said.
The measure Kalra planned to formally announce Friday, Assembly Bill 256, takes aim at a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court case called McCleskey v. Kemp that set a high bar for defendants to prove their case was
muddied by racial injustice.
The latest proposal would apply to all cases, “but the argument has to have some basis in fact,” Kalra said.
That includes racist comments made by attorneys or judges, the striking of jurors based solely on race or data that highlight demographic inequities in sentencing and conviction for the same crime.
Black men in California make up around 5.6% of the state’s adult male population but represent 28.5% of males in the prison system, according to a 2019 Public Policy Institute of California review of 2017 data. Black men are 10 times more likely to face incarceration than their White counterparts.
California’s prison population hovers just below
100,000, per 2020 numbers from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
“I saw firsthand disparities in charges that were being brought against individuals, as well as who was being given more leniency in plea bargaining and who was getting more severe sentences after a conviction,” Kalra said.
Activists supporting the bill said it would be a game changer for those who’ve faced implicit and explicit prejudices in the justice system.
“We have a terrible legacy of racism and bias to overcome,” said Derick Morgan, policy associate for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. “A legacy that’s interwoven into all of our systems, least of all our systems of justice.”
The law Kalra crafted in 2020 originally was intended to apply to any past
and future cases, but it was amended to apply only to prospective cases beginning in 2021.
Opposition included the California District Attorneys Association, which said in a written statement to the Senate Committee on Public Safety that the law would overburden the system by forcing courts to consider “numerous and intangible factors” that would “grind the system to a halt” based “merely on an accusation of bias.”
Kalra countered that the bill is aimed at “eliminating disparities amongst the races, but not letting people off the hook for the crimes they’ve committed.”
Legislative committees analyzing last year’s bill noted it carried unknown costs in compelling courts to reconsider cases but also noted Kalra’s proposal could save taxpayer money by reducing spending on incarceration.