The case of Gary Bryant and Diallo Jackson received attention from all over the country as an early test of California’s Racial Justice Ace.
MARTINEZ — In one of the first major rulings of its kind statewide, a Contra Costa judge reversed murder convictions for two East Contra Costa men, writing that the trial prosecutor and police testimony violated a law designed to eliminate racism in criminal court.by Judge Clare Maier means that Gary Bryant Jr. and Diallo Jackson will likely be re-tried in the 2014 killing of 23-year-old Kenneth Wayne Cooper, of Pittsburg. But Maier’s order has broader implications.
Maier made her decision after listening to hours of testimony from defense expert witnesses, like Andrea Dennis, co-author of the book “Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America.” They picked apart then-deputy district attorney Chris Walpole’s use of slang terms, and an Antioch police detectives testimony about rap lyrics. The prosecution did not call any experts but challenged how the defense experts could know whether jurors relied on rap lyrics without having been inside the jury room.
For instance, Maier ruled Walpole’s repeated use of the term “pistol whip” during his closing arguments “was racially coded language and evoked racial stereotypes of African American men as more likely to engage in acts of violence.” She ruled that the term “drug rip” likely inflamed implicit bias of the jury, but that the terms “down low” and “mean mug” did not.
While writing that she “in no way ascribes racist intent” by the attorneys or Hoffman who used the n-word when discussing rap lyrics, Maier wrote that “use of the racial epithet by the attorneys and gang expert more than likely resulted in priming the jury’s implicit racial bias against African Americans.”
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