California inmate on death row for 33 years must either be released or retried due to prosecutorial misconduct

Inmate on death row for 33 years must either be released or retried over prosecutorial misconduct

A convicted murderer who has been on California’s death row for 33 years must either be released or retried after a federal judge on Thursday approved the state attorney general’s request to do so because of prosecutorial misconduct in jury selection decades ago. The judge’s ruling, at the request of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, gives the Alameda County prosecutor’s office 60 days to retry 71-year-old Curtis Lee Ervin or let him go free. Ervin was found guilty of a 1986 murder-for-hire. It is the latest development in the ongoing review of dozens of death penalty cases that current Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price says shows prosecutors deliberately excluded Black and Jewish prospective jurors. Price told CNN it is a practice that started in the 1980s and ran through the early 2000s. On Friday Price’s office told CNN in an email there was no information on plans on how to proceed with Ervin’s case. Bonta conceded the Alameda prosecutors in the Ervin case illegally excluded Black jurors. Alameda County now must make a decision by September 30. In 1991 jurors found Ervin guilty of murder in the death of Carlene McDonald, the 43-year-old ex-wife of Ervin’s co-defendant, Robert McDonald. McDonald was also found guilty and died in prison. CNN has attempted to reach out to family members of the victim. Ervin’s lawyer, Pamala Sayasane, said her client is “overjoyed and in disbelief. He’s been incarcerated for 38 years. He’s grateful to everyone who helped him. I’m in a daze, as is my client.”