Resentencing in 3 death penalty cases after Alameda Co. review of prosecutor misconduct

ALAMEDA COUNTY, Calif. -- Three death row inmates have been resentenced, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced Tuesday afternoon.

Ernest Dykes, who was convicted of killing a 9-year-old boy in 1993, is expected to be released from prison next year with two years of probation. Keith Thomas, sentenced to death in 1997, will receive 23 years to life in prison. But having served 31 years, Thomas will be up for parole. And Gregory Tate, sentenced in 1993, will receive a life sentence without parole.

In April, a U.S. District Court judge ordered Price to conduct a review of all of Alameda County's 35 death penalty sentences with inmates still alive, which date back to the late 1970s. The order came after the court, while reviewing Dykes' case, found that prosecutors had excluded Black and Jewish people from the jury.

Price said that the inquiry identified a number of cases with prosecutorial misconduct. Thomas' case, she said, relied on racist imagery and stereotypes used by prosecutor James Anderson that have since been banned through recent California laws like 2020's Racial Justice Act.

However, Price said the District Attorney's Office did not concede any misconduct in Tate's case and that the reversal was based on other factors in his "sentencing structure."

Seven individuals associated with the DA's office were under suspicion of misconduct, Price said, including current Assistant District Attorney Michael Nieto. Nieto was nominated in June by Gov. Gavin Newsom to a position on the Contra Costa County Superior Court, and he has a supervisor to look over his cases while the investigation is ongoing, Price said.

The other six individuals are no longer employed at the DA's office, but one was a current judge, Price said.

Over two days of hearings with the District Court, the DA's office reviewed many cases, Price said, but "quite a few" still remain. However, those may be more difficult to review, since more than 70% of the cases have minimal or nonexistent notes on jury selection, according to Price. The DA's office is entertaining the possibility that past prosecutors "sanitized" those records and concealed misconduct, Price said.

"We are now following the law," Price said. "And we will not have an office where people are not held accountable for violating their ethics or engaging in prosecutorial misconduct."

Price apologized on behalf of the District Attorney's Office to the victims of both the Dykes and Thomas cases for the prosecutorial misconduct, as well as to the larger Black, Jewish and LGBTQ communities for denying them opportunities to serve on juries.

"Jurors called to jury service have a right to serve without regard to their religion, their race, their national origin or their sexual orientation," she said. "And the victims who rely upon prosecutors as guardians of the Constitution, as the light bearers of the law, as ministers of justice, are entitled to be able to rely on us to do the right thing."

Price's investigation comes at an uncertain time for her and other Oakland leaders. She and Mayor Sheng Thao will both face a recall in November after both have come under fire for the city's crime rate. And in February, Gov. Gavin Newsom deployed state attorneys to assist Oakland in pursuing criminal convictions, only to abruptly rescind his offer last week, saying Price's office was uncooperative.

"The people elected me to reform this office. To participate in the reform of the criminal justice system that had gone wrong, that had gone bad, that had hurt many people," Price said. "I am here for that reason, and I intend to do just that."