Santa Clara County records first Racial Justice Act violation

The Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office has filed more than a dozen motions over the last four years contesting racist criminal charges against people of color. Only one has been sustained in court.

The county recorded its first Racial Justice Act violation last month since the landmark California law passed in 2020. The bill, authored by San Jose-based Assemblymember Ash Kalra, calls for the reversal of convictions or reduction in charges in cases where defendants face racism. But the county’s milestone ruling may not be the civil rights win advocates were hoping for.

“The finding of a violation is a positive step, but the remedy imposed fell short,” Deputy Public Defender Karina Alvarez, who specializes in cases with discrimination, told San José Spotlight.

The defendant in the case — who the public defender’s office asked to remain unnamed over safety concerns — is a man of Romani descent charged with allegedly abducting and attempting to rape his girlfriend. Advocates argued the charges were overblown by the bias of a San Jose Police Department sergeant who led the investigation and called the defendant a “gypsy” in biased remarks during the case.

Superior Court Judge Benjamin Wiliams agreed there was a violation in a June 20 verbal ruling — and found the discrimination too plain to ignore. But he refused to dismiss or reduce the charges as advocates hoped, due to their gravity. Whether or not the case will end in a plea deal or go to trial is still being sorted out in settlement conferences between the Santa Clara County district attorney and public defender offices.

“This can’t be a pendulum that swings wildly one way or another,” Williams said in court last month, arguing the court should take remedial action only in the interest of justice. “You’re talking about small toxins. The cure can’t kill the patient.”

Alvarez only partially agreed.

“The cure can’t kill the patient. But the medication has to be strong enough for some symptoms to subside,” she said at the hearing.

Alvarez is concerned the ruling, while historic, might set the wrong precedent — and that it doesn’t address the Racial Justice Act’s legislative intent to root out racism in the system that’s not only overt, but implicit.

Over the last four years, Alvarez’s office has challenged a wide range of law enforcement misconduct. That includes cases where police officers called an elderly Black woman lazy, used caricatured Spanish accents and assumed criminality based on Aztec tattoos, according to case documents reviewed by San José Spotlight. In one case, an officer told a Black man to “shake them dreads.” In another, an officer described African American vernacular English as the “language of crime and criminals.”

But none of those cases led to Racial Justice Act violations due to opposition from District Attorney Jeff Rosen’s office. Alvarez said it highlights the difficulty of proving implicit bias in Santa Clara County’s court system.

“We need a much stronger approach that includes taking ordinary instances of biased policing and calling them what they are,” Alvarez said.

The text of Kalra’s Racial Justice Act says even when racism clearly affects a criminal proceeding, it’s nearly impossible to establish under current legal precedent. The law cites a California Court of Appeals opinion that stated, “requiring a showing of purposeful discrimination sets a high standard that is difficult to prove in any context.”

Kalra didn’t respond to requests for comment about the ruling.

Assistant District Attorney David Angel said the office is sympathetic to Judge Williams’ balancing act.

“The (Racial Justice Act) will always require careful balancing of our need to prevent bias from infecting criminal prosecutions with our need to make sure victims of crime, who are often the same race as the perpetrator, are protected,” Angel told San José Spotlight. “At the same time, our office is addressing systemic sources of bias within our system. From our work to end the war on drugs to our work to end the use of the death penalty, we are trying to eliminate systemic bias and instead focus tightly on public safety for our entire community.”

Raj Jayadev, founder of civil rights watchdog group Silicon Valley De-Bug, said the charges against the Roma defendant were overblown — “soaked” in the sergeant’s bias.

“It was a level of bias that endured from the moment of arrest all the way to testimony offered at court by the police sergeant. The officer was not really even trying to back away from it,” Jayadev, who closely observed the case, told San José Spotlight. “She placed charges on the defendant that reflected that bias.”

Since Williams’ ruling, Alvarez said three new cases have been referred to her office for Racial Justice Act evaluation. One of those cases was dropped on Monday, just as Alvarez was preparing her motion.

Alvarez said things will only change when the Racial Justice Act’s intent is carried out to the fullest extent.

“Being the victim of bias, regardless of whether intentional or implicit, is soul crushing. It destroys trust in the system,” she told San José Spotlight. “The (Racial Justice Act) will only be effective if it has teeth and real consequences. Otherwise, nothing will change.”

Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X, formerly known as Twitter.