The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said prosecutors in the trial of Mohammed Haroon Ali, 33, violated his constitutional rights by dismissing at least one and possibly two black potential jurors from a jury pool for racial reasons.

Steve Wagstaffe, chief deputy district attorney for San Mateo County, was the prosecutor in the 2001 trial. Wagstaffe said county prosecutors will confer with the state Attorney General’s Office on whether to appeal to an expanded appeals panel or the U.S. Supreme Court.

But if the decision is left in place, Wagstaffe said he expects his office will seek a new conviction.

“I can’t conceive that he would be allowed to go free,” Wagstaffe said.

Ali was convicted in San Mateo County Superior Court in 2001 of first-degree murder in the 1999 strangulation of Tracey Biletnikoff, 20, the daughter of former Oakland Raiders wide receiver and Pro Football Hall of Fame member Fred Biletnikoff.

He was sentenced to 55 years in prison for the murder plus another nine years for a previous kidnapping conviction for which he had been on parole.

Biletnikoff, who lived with her father in the East Bay, met Ali through a San Mateo County drug treatment program where they were both working as counselors after having recovered from drug addictions.

Her body was found on Feb. 15, 1999, on the campus of Canada College near Redwood City. Ali was arrested the next day in San Diego as he drove her car across the border from Mexico, where he had fled.

Ali, a citizen of Fiji who came to the United States as a teenager, admitted to strangling Biletnikoff during an argument over his relapse into alcohol and drug use two days earlier.

But he argued the crime should be considered manslaughter rather than murder on the ground that he allegedly acted in the heat of passion in fear of being deported to Fiji because of the relapse.

In today’s decision, a three-judge panel said prosecutors violated doctrines set in a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court ruling by dismissing at least one black person from the jury pool in Ali’s trial for reasons of racial discrimination.

There were only two black potential jurors in the jury pool. The appeals court also said prosecutors had “dubious” explanations and a possible racial motive for dismissing the second black jury candidate as well.

The court said Ali must be given a new trial or set free “within a reasonable time.”

Ali took his case to the federal court system with a habeas corpus petition in 2005 after losing appeals in the state court system.

A federal district judge in San Francisco upheld his conviction, but today’s decision overturns that ruling.

Ali’s attorney in the appeal, A.J. Kutchins, said he had not yet studied the decision, but said, “For the last two decades, California courts have had a shameful history of countenancing racial discrimination in jury selection and have been continually rebuked by the federal courts.”