This isn’t a statistical fluke. It reflects a long-standing pattern of racial disparity embedded in how California applies its harshest punishment — one that advocates argue courts can no longer afford to sidestep.

Two years ago, the Office of the State Public Defender, along with several civil rights groups, took an unusual legal path: filing what functions as a civil rights lawsuit directly with the California Supreme Court. The move came after decades in which lower courts repeatedly failed to meaningfully engage with claims of racial bias in capital sentencing.

The petition leans on more than a dozen empirical studies, arguing that the way California carries out capital punishment runs afoul of equal protection guarantees written into the state Constitution. In May, the state Supreme Court agreed the case had merit enough to proceed, sending it to Sacramento Superior Court for further review.

The research cited spans four decades and paints a troubling picture. Black defendants are up to eight times more likely, and Latino defendants up to six times more likely, to be sentenced to death compared with other defendants. Cases involving white victims are also more likely to end in a death sentence than those involving Black or Latino victims.

That bias doesn’t just shape outcomes — it raises the stakes for wrongful convictions. Since 1981, eight people have been exonerated and released from California’s death row. All eight were men of color.

Concerns over this kind of bias were central to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to halt executions in the state. His 2019 executive order establishing the moratorium specifically noted that death sentences have been “unevenly and unfairly applied to people of color.” The data since then hasn’t offered much reassurance: Of the 29 people sentenced to death since the moratorium began, 25 are people of color.

A governor’s moratorium, however, is not permanent — a future administration could reverse it at any time. That’s part of why advocates say a definitive court ruling is essential. Only the courts can settle whether the deep racial disparities baked into the state’s capital punishment system make it unconstitutional.

For years, defendants and their attorneys tried to get courts to seriously examine these disparities, only to be met with procedural gridlock. Troy Ashmus’ case illustrates the problem. Sentenced to death in 1986, Ashmus filed a federal habeas petition in 1998 challenging California’s death penalty system under the Eighth Amendment, backed by substantial evidence of racial bias.

What followed were more than two decades of delays. It wasn’t until 2020 — 22 years after he first raised the issue — that Ashmus finally appeared before a superior court judge. But before a ruling could be issued, he died of COVID-19, and his case was dismissed without ever being decided.

Even Ashmus’ case, frustrating as it was, represented a best-case scenario in some ways: he at least had legal representation and resources behind his appeal. That’s not the norm. Of the roughly 550 people currently on California’s death row, about 70% lack an attorney or the funding needed to pursue appeals or petitions. Even when a defendant manages to raise state constitutional claims, getting the California Supreme Court to weigh in can take more than a decade.

Part of the holdup stems from a shrinking, aging pool of attorneys qualified to handle capital appeals, compounded by chronic underfunding of the system. It can take years just to get appellate counsel appointed. Meanwhile, more than 130 fully briefed capital appeals are already sitting before the state Supreme Court, with dozens more working their way through earlier stages — a backlog that all but guarantees years of additional delay.

The financial toll has been staggering as well. Since 1978, California has spent roughly $6 billion maintaining its death penalty system, while carrying out only 13 executions. The most recent one took place on Jan. 17, 2006 — nearly two decades ago.

Given all of this, the constitutional questions raised in the pending civil rights petition demand timely answers, not another decade of delay. Every year the case remains unresolved, the evidence of racial disparity in California’s death penalty system continues to grow — and so does the human cost of waiting.

Original source: CalMatters

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The unanimous decision marks the first time the state’s high court has reversed a death sentence under the 2020 law, which allows defendants and prisoners to challenge convictions or sentences if racial bias played a role in their case.

Anthony Bankston, a Bloods gang member, represented himself at trial more than three decades ago. A jury convicted him in connection with separate shootings, including the killing of Benson Jones and the attempted murder of Jones’ brother, Benjamin. Bankston was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.

During the penalty phase, a Los Angeles prosecutor told jurors a story about a journalist who viewed a Bengal tiger in a zoo but was told by a hunter that he had not seen the animal in its true state. The prosecutor described the tiger in the wild with its claws, fangs and growl, using the story to argue that Bankston, dressed in a suit and tie in court, was not the same person he was on the street. The prosecutor called him “a killing machine.”

The Supreme Court concluded that the analogy carried an unacceptable risk of racial bias and could have influenced the jury’s decision to impose a death sentence. Bankston’s murder convictions remain in place, but the case will return to a trial court for resentencing.

Justice Leondra Kruger, writing for the court, said the Bengal tiger story has appeared in multiple criminal cases over the years and should no longer be used in California courtrooms. While the court did not say every animal comparison violates the Racial Justice Act, it found that this particular example falls within concerns the Legislature identified when it passed the law.

The Racial Justice Act specifically addresses language and imagery that can dehumanize defendants or appeal to racial stereotypes, including some animal comparisons. The law was enacted after years of debate over racial disparities in policing, prosecution and sentencing.

The court noted that ordinary expressions involving animals, such as “quiet as a mouse” or “free as a bird,” would not necessarily amount to violations. But the justices said prosecutors may not rely on imagery that risks invoking racial prejudice, particularly in a capital case where jurors are deciding whether a person should live or die.

The ruling was one of four decisions issued this week by the California Supreme Court involving claims brought under the Racial Justice Act.

In two other cases, the court upheld death sentences for Alex Demolle, who was convicted of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl, and Marcos Esquivel Barrera, who was sentenced to death for murdering two of his children. In a fourth case involving two condemned prisoners of Southeast Asian descent, the court modified earlier rulings, though not on the basis of their Racial Justice Act claims.

A spokesperson for the Judicial Council of California confirmed that Bankston’s case is the first in which the state Supreme Court has reversed a death sentence because of violations of the Racial Justice Act.

Original source: CalMatters

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The family would wait eight agonizing months to find out more about how the accident unfolded during relatively low-risk ground testing on a MQ-9A Reaper drone at Gray Butte Airfield in California on Sept. 7, 2023. They felt sure there was more to the story than Cosme, a 32-year-old testing engineer who worked for Air Force contractor Sumaria Systems, LLC, simply not following instructions.

A report from the U.S. Air Force Aircraft Accident Investigation Board eventually confirmed their instincts, finding that her trainer rushed the job and improperly instructed Cosme on how to take data readings from the drone, among other contributing factors.

But in a lawsuit filed last month against Sumaria, the family says they see a darker explanation.

Citing witness testimony from the Air Force investigation, the family contends that Cosme’s death was the culmination of a gender and racial discrimination campaign by the testing director, Derek Kirkendall, who they claim had a history of hostility against Hispanic employees at the company.

Saul Ewing, the law firm representing both the company and Kirkendall, said in a statement “the defendants deny any wrongdoing or liability whatsoever,” and that they will “address the allegations of the lawsuit in court through the legal process.”

The Air Force report, released in April, does not cite racial or gender discrimination as a contributing factor to Cosme’s death. But the family’s lawyers, Justin Green and Debra Katz, say they are basing their allegations on witness testimony from the Air Force investigation showing that Kirkendall deliberately isolated Cosme on the day of her death, assigned her to dangerous tasks that kept her away from the rest of the team and failed to inform the ground crew of her role. The lawsuit also says Kirkendall, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, disparaged her using anti-Hispanic tropes, describing her as “lazy.”

“Every night I would go to bed and I would look at her picture and I was like, ‘What happened? Did you get distracted? Did you trip?’” said her sister, Cassaundra Cosme. “The not knowing was terrible.”

But knowing wasn’t much comfort either: “It was a relief that it wasn’t her fault but then it was terrible that it wasn’t a just a horrible accident,” Cosme said.

The lawsuit also cites a hostile workplace complaint filed against Kirkendall by Cosme’s predecessor, who is not named in the filing but is also Latina and quit after raising her concerns. Katz and Green say Kirkendall was subjecting Cosme, who was of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, to similar abuse, ultimately creating the unsafe conditions that led to her death.

In written testimony submitted to the Air Force investigator, one testing engineer said Kirkendall told him he was “hazing” Cosme by having her stand for hours in the sun by the aircraft for a seemingly unimportant task without any way to communicate with her colleagues back in the control station. The Air Force report said that none of the ground crew knew what Cosme’s role was during the testing or that Kirkendall planned to have her approach the aircraft while its propeller was still running.

Kirkendall’s treatment of Cosme is typical of the “way gender harassment works when women try to break into male-dominated fields. They make it much more difficult and they often make them feel unsafe,” said Katz, a prominent civil rights attorney who concentrates on sexual harassment and discrimination.

“Everybody knows he’s hazing her, and this is so endemic to the culture that no one tells him to stop,” Katz added. “We felt this suit was really important to name it for what it is. This is gender discrimination that led to somebody’s death.”

In his testimony to the Air Force investigator, Kirkendall acknowledged that Cosme’s predecessor had filed a hostile environment complaint, saying it came as a shock to him because he thought he had “an excellent rapport” with the woman. Kirkendall said Sumaria completed its investigation into her complaint and “concluded that it was unfounded,” but that the woman had already quit.

The lawsuit also claims that two male Hispanic employees quit Sumaria because of Kirkendall’s mistreatment of them.

The AP could not independently confirm the details of the previous complaint against Kirkendall, or that the two Hispanic engineers also quit. Sumaria representatives did not answer detailed questions about the allegations against Kirkendall or the outcome of the previous complaint.

It is not clear what, if any actions, Sumaria has taken in response to the accident or to the findings of the Air Force investigation.

While the Air Force Aircraft Accident Investigation Board’s report findings are public, any “safety recommendations for preventing a reoccurrence” are made to the parties by a separate investigative board and kept privileged, said Anthony Roake, a spokesperson for Air Force Materiel Command, the command responsible for developing and testing Air Force weapon systems.

Sumaria has defended Kirkendall’s conduct on the day of the test in a detailed response to the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, which conducted its own investigation into Cosme’s death and imposed penalties in March totaling $38,055 for several safety violations, including the company’s failure to effectively instruct employees to maintain a safe distance from the aircraft and rotating propeller. Like the Air Force report, the investigation did not cite racial or gender discrimination as a factor.

Sumaria, which is appealing the penalties, disputed that Kirkendall improperly instructed Cosme and said she “violated all of her training and direct instructions” on how to approach the aircraft.

Jennifer Mondino, director of the TIME UP’s Legal Defense Fund at the National Women’s Law Center, which helps bring sexual and gender harassment cases but is not involved in Cosme’s lawsuit, said gender harassment cases involving a victim who is deceased are not unprecedented but can be complicated. She said proving gender discrimination can be a challenge under any circumstances because it involves persuading people to speak out in a workplace culture that discourages it.

“If the person who was affected is no longer with us, it’s sort of an obvious point, but it’s a significant obstacle,” Mondino said.

From the Cosme family’s perspective, nobody has been held accountable for the failings that led to her death just a few months before she was getting married. The lawsuit demands a jury trial and unspecified damages.

Cosme’s family said her calm and enthusiastic demeanor was typical of her approach toward forging a career in a male-dominated field, starting with engineer classes in high school where she was only one of three girls in the first year and the only one left by the third year. She followed her father, Mario, into engineering and earned a Master of Science in Engineering/Industrial Management from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

The family buried Cosme in her wedding dress, which they had altered so it could cover her wounds.

“We will never get over this. We had a perfect life going on. Life was wonderful,” Mario Cosme said. “And Sumaria and Derek Kirkendall ruined a lifetime of effort of doing things the right way.”

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