SAN JOSE — An appellate courtroom has overturned the 2020 rape conviction of ex-San Francisco 49ers star Dana Stubblefield, ruling that the prosecution violated the Racial Justice Act by stating at trial that his standing as a well-known Black man was why police by no means searched his home for a gun he was accused of utilizing in the course of the crime.
In an opinion printed Thursday, the San Jose-based Sixth District Courtroom of Attraction declared that Stubblefield’s conviction is “legally invalid” and in addition vacated his subsequent 15-year jail sentence.
Stubblefield, who performed for the 49ers from 1993 to 2001 — and was NFL Defensive Participant of the Yr in 1997 — has been in state jail since 2021 whereas his attraction was litigated. The now 54-year-old was convicted of raping, with the specter of a gun, a lady who had come to his Morgan Hill house to interview for a babysitting job in 2015.
“We’re over the moon,” Allen Sawyer, who served as Stubblefield’s trial legal professional, together with Ken Rosenfeld, stated in an interview Thursday. “We knew from the day we stepped out of this courtroom when the jury came back, that this was not over, that this would not stand.”
Because of the upper courtroom’s ruling, the Santa Clara County District Lawyer’s Workplace now has to determine whether or not to re-file costs and prosecute the case once more. There isn’t a clear timeline on when that may occur.
The DA’s workplace declined to supply particular touch upon the ruling, saying in an announcement, “We are studying the opinion.”
The Racial Justice Act of 2020, authored by state Assemblyman Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, went into impact in 2021 and makes it unlawful to acquire a conviction “on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin.” The legislation permits authorized challenges to costs, convictions and sentences influenced by systemic bias.
Thursday’s appellate ruling marked the primary main case reversal in Santa Clara County citing the legislation. In close by Contra Costa County, the act has been cited in not less than three rulings that overturned severe costs, together with homicide convictions.
A 3-judge panel led by Presiding Justice Mary Greenwood, who authored the ruling, discovered main issues with Deputy District Lawyer Tim McInerney’s rationalization to jurors for why Morgan Hill police didn’t search Stubblefield’s house for a gun he was accused of utilizing to threaten the girl in the course of the reported 2015 sexual assault.
Greenwood referenced how McInerney, in his closing arguments in July 2020, stated a police search of Stubblefield’s house within the early phases of the investigation “would have opened up ‘a storm of controversy,’” which the justice took as an implicit reference to civil unrest across the country over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020.
That assertion, Greenwood wrote, “implied the house might have been searched and a gun found had Stubblefield not been Black, and that Stubblefield gained an undeserved advantage at trial because he was a Black man.”
“Whether a search would have uncovered a gun or confirmed the absence of one, the argument meant Stubblefield’s race may properly have impacted the state of the proof, shifting the load of it both in opposition to him or in his favor,” Greenwood later wrote. “Using race in that fashion invited the listener to consider the fact that Stubblefield was a Black man in weighing the evidence.”
That characterization, the ruling acknowledged, may have unfairly inspired somebody, together with a juror, to “feel justified or even compelled by misguided notions of racial fairness to overlook or discount the absence of a gun” when figuring out Stubblefield’s guilt.
Greenwood added that the prosecution’s assertion gave a transparent nod to the outrage over Floyd’s killing, “appealing to racially biased perceptions of those events and associating Stubblefield with them based on his race.”
The reported sufferer, recognized in courtroom as Jane Doe, testified that after she and Stubblefield completed an preliminary interview and he or she left his home, he texted her, saying he wish to pay her for having come up from Hollister. Doe had stated that when she returned, he gave her $80, then locked the entrance door and carried her right into a first-floor bed room and assaulted her.
Rosenfeld and Sawyer challenged Doe’s honesty throughout her testimony, disputed the prosecution’s timeline and argued that the rationale she returned to the house was to gather cash for a paid sexual encounter.
They famous after the conviction how jurors rejected two felony costs alleging that Stubblefield exploited a lady who was mentally incapable of offering consent to intercourse. Throughout trial, additionally they sought to point out that Doe’s proficiency with web sites and social-media contradicted the prosecution’s claims of her mental incapacity.
Sawyer stated the appellate ruling provides credence to the protection staff’s frustrations with being prevented by Choose Arthur Bocanegra to introduce proof that will have exonerated Stubblefield at trial, somewhat than three years right into a sentence at Corcoran State Jail.
In addition they took subject with COVID-19 courtroom measures at trial that offered their shopper as masked and separated from his attorneys by glass, which Sawyer stated gave the looks of Stubblefield being “caged” in entrance of the jury.
“The context of this case was so unfair, layers upon layers,” Sawyer stated Thursday. “But we’re happy, and we can’t wait to get Dana out of custody. We expect that to happen soon.”
