Alameda County public defender challenges judge over lack of Black jurors

After a couple dozen prospective jurors had been allowed to go home, Janeek Mollique, Route’s attorney, scanned the room — and it dawned on her that there were no Black people left.

That meant Route, who is Black, would stand trial with no chance that a single Black person would end up on her jury.

On Thursday, Chief Public Defender Brendon Woods appeared in court alongside Mollique and Charles Denton, an assistant public defender.

Mollique and Denton, a veteran attorney with nearly three decades of courtroom experience, requested that Judge Pelayo Llamas call in a new panel of potential jurors, including at least one Black person. That way, there would be a chance, however small, that the jury selected from this group could include someone Black. Denton and Mollique argued that would minimize any perception of bias.

“The court has authority to remedy the situation,” Denton said, citing a 2021 federal appeals court ruling saying courts have “inherent authority” to manage important processes like jury selection.

Deputy District Attorney James Logan, who supervises the DA’s misdemeanor trial team, objected.

If the public defender’s office thought the jury selection process was flawed or the composition of the jury pool a problem, Logan said, they would be free to file an appeal once the jury reached a verdict. Meanwhile, Logan said, Route’s trial should proceed. He cited a 1979 Supreme Court case that laid out some of this process for redress.

Denton responded that it would be far easier for the judge to simply call in a new jury pool.

Llamas sided with the prosecution, defending the court’s process of calling in prospective jurors and saying he wasn’t willing to assume “that the jurors who show up, because they’re not the same race as Ms. Route, are going to be biased against her.”

At that point, Woods, who had been listening intently, rose to address the judge.

“The public defender’s office refuses to proceed with this case to trial,” he said.

The tension in the courtroom was palpable. “This panel is not a jury of our client’s peers,” Woods continued. “You cannot expect her to have a fair trial without a single Black person on the panel.”

Llamas replied he was “troubled” by Woods’ refusal to proceed.

Route’s case, an otherwise unremarkable misdemeanor trial, had brought to a head a long-simmering debate in Alameda County about juries.

An appearance of unfairness?

For years, Woods has warned the legal community of the systematic underrepresentation of Black people on local juries. He was even featured in a 2024 documentary about the issue. This pattern, he said, is especially concerning in Oakland, where roughly 1 in 5 of the city’s residents are Black, but where it’s not uncommon for juries to lack any Black representation. When a jury’s members don’t reflect the community, Woods has argued, it undermines the defendant’s constitutional right to a trial by their peers.

Legal experts mostly agree. The Constitution’s Sixth Amendment, which guarantees the right to a trial by an impartial jury of one’s peers, has been interpreted, since the 1960s, to mean that juries should be composed of a cross-section of the community where the alleged crime was committed. Prosecutors and defense attorneys are allowed to question and exclude jurors who show obvious bias and for other reasons — but they’re not allowed to get rid of jurors simply because of their race or because they’re members of another protected class.

Studies have found racially mixed juriesmake better decisions and are viewed as more legitimate by the public. All-white juries, on the other hand, have been found to convict Black defendants at higher rates than juries with at least two people of color.

Black people, in particular, continue to be wrongfully excluded from juries because of either intentional discrimination or implicit bias, mainly by prosecutors. According to a 2020 UC Berkeley Law report, these problems are still “an ever-present feature of jury selection in California.”

But there’s another problem that undermines jury diversity, one that starts with the process by which people are summoned to serve.

A 2010 study by the ACLU of Northern California found that Alameda County “suffers from systemic underrepresentation of African-American and Latino jurors in its jury pools.” The problem, according to the study, started with who was registered for jury duty. While Black people made up 18% of the county’s eligible jury pool, only 8% appeared for jury duty. Various barriers to serving got in the way.

Some efforts have been made to increase racial diversity on juries.

In 2022, California lawmakers approved a pilot program to increase pay for jurors from $12 to $100 per day and increase travel reimbursements. The idea was to make it economically easier for low-income people to serve on trials that can last for weeks or longer. Alameda County was one of several that took part in the program. Last year, however, Gov. Gavin Newsom clawed back the funding, pausing the pilot indefinitely.

Paul Rosynsky, a spokesperson for the Alameda County Superior Court, said the court was “disappointed” by the state’s decision.

“The court believed the pilot program could have provided valuable information regarding jury demographics and incentives to attract a more diverse pool,” he told The Oaklandside by email.

Demographic data from the pilot program, which ran for six months, has yet to be released publicly, Rosynsky said. The National Center for the State Courts collected that data under a contract with the Judicial Council of California.

The district attorney’s office did not respond to questions from The Oaklandside about its views on jury diversity, the jury selection process, and Route’s case in particular.

A second jury pool promises more Black representation

On Thursday, the same day Woods refused to proceed with Route’s trial, Woods filed a motion under the California Racial Justice Act, arguing that the absence of Black people in the pool of potential jurors violated Route’s constitutional right to a fair trial. The Racial Justice Act, Woods argued, gives judges the authority to dismiss a jury panel and call in a new one if the existing pool would not lead to a fair trial.

After Llamas denied the public defender’s request — and Woods refused to move forward with the trial — Llamas sought to strike a compromise. He said he would ask the court administration to call in a new group of potential jurors for the case, but said he wouldn’t excuse the pool of jurors the court had already brought in.

On Friday morning, 56 additional people walked into Llamas’ courtroom with jury summons cards in their hands.

Of those, four appeared to be Black, according to an estimate by The Oaklandside. One of them asked to be excused for hardship because she was recovering from an injury, but the judge denied her request.

“I want to keep you in the jury pool,” Llamas told her.

After excusing 20 other potential jurors for hardship, Llamas instructed everyone else to return on Tuesday morning for voir dire, the process in which the attorneys and the judge question potential jurors to ensure that they can serve without bias.

According to the public defender’s team, the odds of a Black person ending up on the jury are still extremely small. That’s because the judge plans to start voir dire with only those from the first prospective juror pool. The court will move on to the new group that appears to include four Black people, only if there are still seats left to fill.

Woods and Mollique, the deputy public defender, asked the judge to combine both juror groups, arguing that merging and randomizing the names would increase the odds that at least one Black person would be seated as a juror.

Asked their opinion, the prosecutors deferred to the judge.

Mollique criticized the prosecution for not taking a stance, and for its earlier objection to a new pool: “We’re in a situation where our very reasonable request is being objected to, and it’s making the defense feel as if the people are trying to whitewash this jury,” she said.

Llamas rejected the defense’s request. And the defender’s office said it plans to proceed with the trial.

Denton said if Woods refused to proceed with the case, it could have been grounds for the judge to hold him in contempt of court, which carries the risk of jail time.

But Woods is glad he pushed back. “The fact that we were about to have a trial in Oakland, California, with a Black client who’s pregnant, and the charges were that she assaulted a police officer and resisted arrest, without a single Black juror, required my intervention,” he told The Oaklandside.

This story was originally published by The Oaklandside and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.