The Racial Justice Act, a landmark piece of California legislation that allows criminal defendants to challenge their cases on the basis of implicit or explicit racial bias in the charging, sentencing or proceedings, has made its way to San Mateo County’s criminal justice system in two cases — one involving gang-related activity charges and the other, vehicular manslaughter.
There are around three to four more Racial Justice Act cases in the discovery phase of litigation, Shin-Mee Chang, San Mateo County assistant district attorney, said.
The original Racial Justice Act legislation, authored by Assemblymember Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, went into effect in the beginning of January 2021.
“The short-term goal is to really take a look at racially biased outcomes and eliminate them,” Kalra said of the legislation’s purpose. “The long term goal is behavior change — having a change in behavior of law enforcement so they are forced to … filter racial bias in their decision-making process. Ultimately creating systemic change in our system is the long-term goal.”
Because of an additional piece of legislation entitled the Racial Justice For All Act, it will apply to some retroactive felony cases by January 2023 and all retroactive felony cases by January 2026.
In both San Mateo County cases in which Racial Justice Act motions have been filed, the defense is using statistical disparity claims to challenge their client’s charges by saying there is evidence people of one race are disproportionally charged or convicted of a specific crime or enhancement.
“I think that statistics are the most objective way you can look at a system and determine whether or not there’s something going on,” Gerritt Rutgers, the defense attorney in the gang-related activity case, said.
Rutgers is representing Rodrigo Antonio Camacho, who is being charged with three felonies, including dissuading a witness, and gang-related enhancements for allegedly reposting an Instagram story in 2019 that identified an informant in the Norteño street gang as well as allegedly being a member of a Norteño gang subset, according to the District Attorney’s Office. The informant had been involved in a joint firearms trafficking operation by the Gang Intelligence Unit and Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms which targeted some members of the Norteño gang, the District Attorney’s Office said.
According to prosecutors, Camacho and his co-defendants all allegedly reposted some variation of the story, some with the phrase “Greenlight For This Sukkkka,” a term that can be used to put a hit out — although Camacho did not post that phrase, Rutgers said. One co-defendant, Juan Pablo Duran, pleaded no contest to felony threat, admitting the gang allegation, another, Adrian Alvarez, has a warrant out for his arrest. The defense for the third co-defendant, Jose Luis Contreras, is also using Rutger’s Racial Justice Act motion.
Dissuading a witness from testifying with the gang enhancement could carry a sentence of up to life in prison if prosecutors seek the charge, District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said, something Rutgers called “positively draconian” in his motion.
According to preliminary data, Camacho’s defense team in the motion concluded that as a Latinx defendant charged with dissuading a witness from reporting a crime, Camacho is 7.5 times more likely to be charged with a gang enhancement, and as a Latinx defendant charged with criminal threat, he is 23.1 times more likely to be charged with a gang enhancement.
The District Attorney’s Office has hired third-party vendor Sicuro Data Analytics — which often partners with criminal justice agencies, per its website — to review this data to ensure accuracy and provide a complete statistical picture via comparative analysis, Chang said. The case, which is currently in pretrial and has already been dismissed and re-filed once, is in continuance for this review.
Recommended for you
“Whether it’s intentional or not intentional, or it’s cause and effect, those are arguments that are going to be made,” Rutgers said. “I expect those kind of arguments to come — ‘well yes, you do see those statistics, but’ … they’ll point to something that will supposedly give it a non-racial spin.”
The other Racial Justice Act motion, regarding a felony vehicular manslaughter case against defendant Vincent Quall, found that of 39 vehicular manslaughter cases in San Mateo County from 2015-2022, all three Black defendants were charged with felony, whereas three of 17 white defendants were charged with felony and 14 with a misdemeanor.
Defense attorney Cherie Wallace said the court has ordered the District Attorney’s Office to produce the data on the subject, which it has not done twice. Wagstaffe said that the court wants information only on vehicular manslaughter both under and not under the influence, but the district attorney’s database automatically includes a third data subset, involuntary manslaughter, although they are working to parse through it.
“The motions that we get are usually filed months in advance of trial, this one was filed on the day of trial and hence we need additional time in order to be able to get the information,” Wagstaffe said.
Quall, a truck driver, was driving on Highway 1 near Moss Beach in September 2022 when he crossed the double yellow lines for a significant distance, allegedly striking and killing a biker, Harald Herrmann, and breaking his own leg, according to the District Attorney’s Office. Police on the scene said Quall was not under the influence but was very tired — he said he had only gotten two hours of sleep — according to the District Attorney’s Office.
“The District Attorney’s Office sought every possible enhancement, it feels incredibly draconian and punitive in a case where everyone agrees the killing was accidental,” Wallace said of the decision to charge Quall with a felony. “I think the most appropriate form of relief in the case would be reducing the charge to a misdemeanor.”
For Kalra, who authored the act, his experience in the criminal justice system was an impetus for the act’s inception.
“It’s really an overall sense you get that you have to be in some serious cognitive dissonance if you can ignore the racial disparities that are apparent in our racial justice system,” Kalra said.
Kalra said he will continue to pursue racial justice throughout the state in his tenure as an assemblymember, and it’s particularly needed in the court system.
“I’ll always take on systemic racism in every part of our state, but particularly in the criminal justice system, because you’re taking someone’s liberty away,” he said.
(650) 344-5200 ext. 105
(3) comments
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it must be a duck. If he belongs to a gang, has gang tattoos, puts out hits on rival gang members, he must be a gang member. And somehow "the long term goal is behavior change - having a change in behavior of law enforcement". Good grief, how about a behavior change in the yutes of society
Well said, Not So Common. Seems to me we need the same behavior change in folks whose job is enforcing law and order. Key word being "enforcing."
Ah yes, the race to the bottom continues with increasing reasons (however pie-in-the-sky) to excuse bad behavior and release criminals back into the Bay Area wild. For those still in high school, apparently statistics may become the field you should go into, along with public speaking classes, as you’ll likely be asked to testify about statistics, for one side or the other (or maybe both). And folks wonder why there’s a CA exodus…
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.