In a significant turn in a decades-old murder case, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price has announced that the 1991 death penalty conviction of Curtis Lee Ervin for the 1986 murder of Carlene McDonald has been overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct. According to the Alameda County District Attorney's Office, the Attorney General's review revealed that during the jury selection for Ervin's trial, African American prospective jurors were improperly excluded, a violation known as a Batson claim.

Following the Attorney General's re-examination, the U.S. District Court vacated the original judgment and issued a conditional writ of habeas corpus on August 1. This writ compels the District Attorney's office to either retry Mr. Ervin or release him within 60 days. Having served 38 years of incarceration, the ruling has left Ervin and his legal representation in astonishment, and his attorney Pamala Sayasane relayed their feelings of joy and disbelief, as per CNN. The prosecutorial team during the original trial, led by Deputy District Attorney James Anderson, exercised 15 peremptory strikes, nearly ensuring a racial bias by excluding 9 of the 11 Black prospective jurors.

"My team has spoken with the surviving family members of Ms. McDonald, and today, I offer my condolences and an apology on behalf of the Alameda County District Attorney's Office due to the prosecutorial misconduct and the failure of the supervisors of Deputy District Attorney Anderson", Price stated, acknowledging the revivified pain that the family must endure, as reported by the Alameda County District Attorney's Office.

Marking not just an isolated incident but possibly a trend in the department's past, reports from the Alameda County DA's Office suggest instances where notes during jury selection by prosecutors in other cases indicated biases against potential Jewish and Black jurors. The gravity of these findings suggests a systemic issue that District Attorney Price, who is currently facing a recall, is confronting head-on. The office has been involved in settlement negotiations for death row inmates whose cases displayed similar constitutional violations. As cited by CNN, defense attorney Linda Kenney Baden said that prosecuting such a historic crime again "would be almost impossible to retry," indicating the complex challenge ahead in rectifying these past wrongs.

Price has been proactive in initiating reviews of past death penalty cases, with last year's investigation into the case of Ernest Dykes prompting a flurry of actions to address injustices rooted in unconstitutional trial proceedings. "All of these people deserve to have either a new trial or a resolution of their current case that rectifies the injustice … of the unconstitutional trials that they had," said Brian Pomerantz, an attorney involved in the settlement of dozens of the cases, indicating the broader implications of Ervin's case and others like it, as per CNN.