Ernest Dykes, whose appeal last year of his 1995 death sentence was the catalyst for an investigation into 35 death penalty cases in California’s Alameda County for evidence that prosecutors had systematically excluded Jewish and Black individuals from jury pools stretching back to 1981, is now a free man.
Dykes was convicted in 1995 for the murder of 9-year-old Lance Clark and the attempted murder of his grandmother, Bernice Clark, during a robbery. When he appealed his sentence in 2023, a deputy district attorney reviewed his case and found handwritten notes indicating prosecutors had intentionally excluded Jewish and Black potential jurors from the jury pool. The notes were disclosed to Dykes’ lawyers, and Judge Vince Chhabria of the U.S. District Court of Northern California, who was presiding over the resentencing hearing, ordered Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price to review all capital convictions over the past 30 years for evidence of jury exclusion.
That review identified 35 cases dating back to from the mid-1980s through 2007 indicating jurors had been excluded because of race. More than half of those cases, including Dykes’, have resulted in resentences of less than death. There are more cases still to be reviewed.
