One by one, a California prosecutor eliminated five out of six Black women from the jury pool for a 2000 death-penalty case in which Giles Albert Nadey, a white carpet cleaner, slayed his client, a young mother, the Associated Press reports, in a story originally published by CalMatters. The prosecutor gave reasons: one appeared too reluctant to impose a death sentence; another had a “liberal bent.” The jury proceeded with no Black members even though Black people made up close to 15% of Alameda County’s population at the time. That jury in February 2000 found Nadey guilty of murdering and sodomizing 24-year-old Terena Fermenick, sending him to death row.
Twenty-four years later, the Alameda District Attorney’s office is in the hot seat for allegedly striking Black and Jewish people from juries around the time of Nadey’s sentencing. A federal judge two months ago ordered it to review all of its death penalty cases to look for signs of racial bias. In Nadey’s case, however, the California Supreme Court this week upheld his sentence, finding, in a 5-2 decision, that the prosecutor had valid reasons to dismiss the Black jurors. The decision highlights the complexities to address racial bias in capital cases. Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 declared a moratorium on executions, 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.”