Court Overturns Murder Conviction Due to Dismissal of 2 Black Jurors

• An Oregon appeals court overturned the conviction of a man accused of killing his toddler.
• The appeals court found two Black jurors were improperly dismissed from service.
• It has become more common to overturn convictions due to an improper ruling on a Batson challenge.

The Oregon Court of Appeals overturned a Portland man’s murder conviction after it found that prosecutors excused the only two Black jurors on the panel because of their race.

In 2018, a jury found that Darian Lee McWoods, who is Black, guilty of killing his 15-month-old daughter, Kamaya Flores, who had broken ribs, bruising, and methadone in her system when she died five years earlier.

No Black jurors deliberated in the case.

On Wednesday, the appeals court overturned the conviction of McWoods, who is serving a life sentence, after it ruled prosecutors engaged in “purposeful discrimination” during jury selection.

At trial, Multnomah County Senior Deputy District Attorney Amanda Nadell gave race-neutral reasons for dismissing potential jurors six and nine, but the court found those reasons were simply a “pretext.”

Nadell said she used peremptory challenges to dismiss the jurors because one indicated having no experience with children and she believed the other didn’t trust police.

McWoods’ attorney used a Batson challenge at trial — objecting the validity of a peremptory challenge on grounds that prosecutors used it to exclude a potential juror based on race, ethnicity, or sex — but the judge accepted the prosecutor’s justifications.

The appeals court, though, found that the answers the Black potential jurors gave were similar to jurors who were not Black and weren’t excused by the prosecution.

“As we have already described, there were non-black jurors who provided the same answers that the state offered as reasons to excuse juror number 9. That was true of juror number 6 as well,” Presiding Judge Josephine Mooney wrote in the ruling. “The plausibility of the state’s race-neutral reasons for excusing an otherwise qualified black juror decreased with the second strike. ”

 

Jane Rosenberg/Reuters

Racism in the courts

It has become more common in recent years for appeals courts to overturn convictions after finding a lower court improperly ruled on a Batson challenge.

Lawyers for the prosecution and defense are given a certain number of free peremptory challenges for which they are allowed to excuse people from the jury pool who they feel may be biased against their case — for any reason other than their race, gender, or sex.

If the opposing attorney believes those discriminatory factors played any role in the challenge, they can object and then an explanation is required. If the judge finds the challenge is acceptable, it will stand.

In some cases, like McWoods’, a higher court will disagree and that could lead to a conviction being reversed.

In February, for example, the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed a robbery conviction after it found two potential Black female jurors were improperly dismissed from service. The women were among only three Black people in the jury pool, and the higher court found the prosecutor’s reasoning for using their peremptory challenges against them didn’t hold up as “race-neutral.”

Despite Batson being established by the US Supreme Court in 1986, the February ruling was the first time in North Carolina’s history that a conviction was overturned on that basis.

Research has shown that racially diverse juries deliberate for longer and make fewer errors.  Despite this, Black people are already already less likely to be called for jury service.

One reason is that jury pools are drawn from DMV or voter records, which tend to be more accurate when people remain at the same address for long periods of time — which is more common among white Americans.

Then, when attorneys are narrowing down the jury selections from the initial pool, questions about negative interactions with police or beliefs around wrongful convictions can also end up excluding people of color.

It is widely believed among criminal justice reformists that as long as the peremptory challenge exists, there will be cases in which attorneys use it to dismiss jurors for racist reasons.

Last year, Arizona was the first state in the country to eliminate peremptory challeges completely in the jury selection process.

 

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Back to the lower court

McWoods was found guilty of murder by abuse, first-degree criminal mistreatment, and witness tampering.

Prosecutors said at trial that Kamaya died of methadone poisoning and that McWoods had the habit of mixing his drugs into Capri Sun fruit drinks. They believed he either gave her the methadone or she unintentionally took it, The Oregonian reported at the time. 

McWoods’ attorney argued that Kamaya could have died of natural causes, like her sickle cell anemia, or may have accidentally gotten a hold of a methadone pill at a family member’s home.

McWoods spoke at his sentencing, insisting he was innocent.

“My daughter knows her daddy’s innocent,” McWoods said, according to the Oregonian.

Now the case will be referred back to the Multnomah County Circuit Court and a decision regarding a new trail will then be made, Elisabeth Shepard, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors’ office, told Insider.

“We have reviewed the Court of Appeals’ thoughtful opinion regarding the 2018 McWoods trial and we intend to use its findings to further educate and inform our role in the administration of justice,” Shepard said. “The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office is a learning organization that strives carry out our responsibilities with integrity and humility. We are committed to the ongoing pursuit of a safer more equitable system.”

A message left for the appellate section of the state Office of Public Defense Services  was not immediately returned.