RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Attorneys representing the American Civil Liberties Union presented expert testimony alleging racial disparities in Riverside County death penalty prosecutions during what the organization described as California’s first evidentiary hearing in a capital case under the state’s Racial Justice Act.
According to a Nov. 2 announcement by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, six expert witnesses presented evidence of what the organization characterized as a historical and continuing pattern of racial discrimination in the county’s decisions to seek the death penalty.
The testimony included statistical analyses indicating that prosecutors under Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin pursued capital punishment against Black and Latino defendants at disproportionately higher rates than against white defendants.
According to the ACLU, the studies found that Black defendants were 7.31 times as likely and Latino defendants were 3.86 times as likely as white defendants to face a death penalty filing by the district attorney’s office.
The organization also reported that prosecutors sought the death penalty against Black and Latino defendants at nearly twice the rate of white defendants during Hestrin’s tenure.
The findings were presented as evidence of potential violations of California’s Racial Justice Act, which prohibits the state from seeking or obtaining a criminal conviction or imposing a sentence on the basis of race, ethnicity or national origin.
Enacted in 2020, the California Racial Justice Act allows people accused or convicted of crimes to challenge prosecutorial decisions, convictions and sentences based on evidence of racial discrimination.
Such evidence may include discriminatory statements or conduct during an investigation or trial, racial bias in jury selection, or statistical disparities in charging decisions, convictions and sentencing outcomes.
The law was enacted in part to address limitations imposed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1987 decision in McCleskey v. Kemp.
In that case, the Supreme Court rejected a constitutional challenge to Georgia’s death penalty system despite statistical evidence showing racial disparities in capital sentencing.
The Court held that the statistical evidence presented did not establish that unconstitutional discrimination had affected the defendant’s individual case.
California lawmakers subsequently adopted a different legal framework, allowing statistical evidence of racial disparities to support claims under state law without requiring the same showing of intentional discrimination demanded under the federal constitutional standard established in McCleskey.
In October 2025, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed amendments intended to strengthen the California Racial Justice Act and clarify the standards governing claims of racial discrimination.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the amendments clarified the threshold for bringing a claim, expanded eligibility for appointed counsel for indigent people sentenced to death, facilitated access to discovery and required courts to provide remedies when violations are established.
The legislation also reaffirmed California lawmakers’ rejection of the legal framework established in McCleskey.
According to the legislative text of Assembly Bill 1071, lawmakers emphasized their intent that statistical evidence can be sufficient to establish a prima facie case and may also establish a violation of the Racial Justice Act.
The Riverside County hearing represents an application of those provisions to decisions about whether prosecutors seek capital punishment.
The ACLU’s evidence focused on the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, including whether race was associated with differences in the likelihood that a person accused of a death-eligible offense would face a capital prosecution.
The organization also pointed to Riverside County’s historically high number of death sentences compared with other California jurisdictions.
According to the ACLU, Riverside County accounted for approximately one-third of California’s new death sentences between 2015 and 2019, despite representing approximately 6% of the state’s population.
The figures underscore the county’s substantial role in California’s use of capital punishment during that period, although the number of death sentences alone does not establish racial discrimination.
The statistical evidence presented at the hearing was intended to examine whether differences in charging decisions were associated with defendants’ race or ethnicity.
“Riverside County has a clear pattern of discriminating against Black and Latine individuals when it comes to the death penalty,” said Cassy Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project.
The allegations concern decisions made by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office, which is responsible for determining whether to seek the death penalty in eligible homicide prosecutions.
The available ACLU announcement does not establish whether the court has made findings concerning the statistical evidence or whether prosecutors have presented rebuttal evidence addressing the alleged disparities.
A judicial determination that the Racial Justice Act was violated would require the court to evaluate the evidence under the applicable statutory standards.
California is not the first state to enact legislation addressing racial discrimination in capital punishment.
Kentucky adopted its Racial Justice Act in 1998, becoming the first state to establish a statutory procedure allowing defendants to challenge the death penalty based on evidence of racial discrimination.
North Carolina enacted a similar law in 2009, allowing people facing capital punishment to use statistical evidence to demonstrate racial disparities in death penalty proceedings.
The North Carolina General Assembly repealed the law in 2013, but the state’s Supreme Court subsequently ruled in 2020 that people who had filed claims before the repeal could continue pursuing relief under the earlier statute.
California’s law differs from those earlier measures because it applies more broadly to criminal prosecutions and sentencing, rather than exclusively to capital cases.
Stubbs said the California legislation was enacted “to ensure that a person’s race does not determine their fate.”
She argued that the Riverside County evidence demonstrates why the law is necessary and that a finding of unlawful discrimination should result in the death penalty being removed as a sentencing option.
“If the court finds that systemic racial bias influenced capital charging decisions under the CRJA standards like these witnesses allege,” Stubbs said, “the court should uphold that promise and take the death penalty off the table.”
The court has not yet been reported to have ruled on whether the evidence establishes a violation of the California Racial Justice Act.
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