Federal judge orders California county to review death penalty cases

The Alameda County D.A.'s office has identified 35 death penalty cases going back to 1977 that are now under review, Price said. If additional issues are discovered, the review may widen to include other cases that did not involve death sentences, she said.

Price, a former civil rights and defense attorney, was elected Alameda County D.A. in 2022 after pledging to reform the criminal justice system and hold police accountable. She is now facing a recall campaign.

Price said Monday that the decision to review the cases was not just an order handed down from a federal judge, but an ethical issue.

"This is not about left or right or any kind of politics," she said Monday. "This is about ethics."

Because of the evidence uncovered, she said, the office has a duty to review all of the cases from the county that resulted in a death sentence, but the sentence has yet to be carried out.

"This is horrifying," said Michael Collins, senior director of Color Of Change, a nonprofit civil rights advocacy organization. "The prosecutors and judges implicated in this scandal engaged in racist and antisemitic practices and sent people to their deaths."

Color Of Change is one of several organizations involved in the Alameda County D.A. Accountability Table, a coalition of groups looking to address criminal justice issues in the area.

"For too long, prosecutors have sought to win at all costs, even if it means engaging in constitutional violations, civil rights violations and antisemitic and racially disparate practices that result in people sentenced to death," Collins said.

Collins said Color Of Change supported the review, and he commended Price for publicly addressing it. He said the organization was also calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to open a civil rights investigation.

Price said her office is in contact with Dykes' attorneys about how to proceed on his case, but discussions are still pending. "We don't know yet what is appropriate," she said.

Dykes, who was 20 at the time, was convicted of killing 9-year-old Lance Clark and attempting to kill the boy's grandmother, Bernice Clark, during an attempted robbery, according to court records.

He was unemployed when he tried to rob Clark, who owned the apartment building he lived in, court records say.

The Alameda County District Attorney's office is also reaching out to victims and survivors in the cases affected by the federal review order, Price said.

"We recognize how terrible this is, and it is something we have to make right," she said.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in 2019 a moratorium on the death penalty, but hundreds of people remain in the state's death row.