Santa Clara Public Defender’s Set Precedent in Opening Door to Data Needed for the RJA

Editor's Note: Author Zach Kirk writes about a landmark Santa Clara County Racial Justice Act case where an appellate court is sending the case back to trial court. The case has potentially massive implications in potentially requiring District Attorneys to hand over data regarding charging disparities in resisting arrest cases.

In a historic victory in the struggle to ensure the Racial Justice Act has impact, the Santa Clara County Public Defender and their RJA team led by Karina Alvarez and Brett Hammon won a landmark Racial Justice Act case. The order from the appellate court sends the case back to the trial court with clear instructions, likely requiring the District Attorney to hand over data around charging disparities in resisting arrest cases that overwhelmingly target Latinos. 

In this case, Mr. Gonzales was present during a domestic violence call. He was not involved in the alleged incident. According to police, Gonzales was in the way of the investigation and yelled at officers. Gonzales was taken into custody after officers claimed that he was about to fight them, but no actual violence broke out. Mr. Gonzales was charged with a stand-alone resisting arrest charge under PC § 148(a)(1).

In support of the writ to the appellate court, De-Bug provided amicus support, along with the ACLU and Assemblymember Ash Kalra who authored the RJA. With help from attorney Brian McComas, De-Bug was able to pile on evidence of systemic bias by relating our community experience about the San Jose Police Department’s long-running crackdown on Latino individuals in public places. The appellate court “considered all briefing in the course of [their] review.” While the community at-large might be sidelined during trial court hearings and even more so during appellate hearings, we hope that community organizations and community experts feel empowered to support the valiant efforts in forming RJA laws that have been shifting in positive and negative directions. With the simple words and intent of the RJA being contorted by DAs and most courts, the real work of the RJA has been following bad trial court decisions through the appellate courts to ensure that good case law can be made for the individuals that will file RJA motions and petitions in the future.

The appellate court reversed because the trial court misunderstood and misapplied the Young case, which discussed the foundation necessary for giving individuals access to the DA’s database to prove data violations of the RJA.

In Young v. Superior Court, 79 Cal. App. 5th 138 (2022), the court dismissed an (a)(3) claim alleging that there were charging disparities related. One of the greatest difficulties of RJA data litigation so far has been the requirement under PC 745(a)(3) and PC 745(a)(4) for countywide data indicating charging, conviction, or sentencing disparities. As gathering satisfactory county-wide data on charging disparities is nearly impossible without access to the District Attorney’s databases, the defense in Young could only offer statewide data showing disparities. 

To fill this acknowledged gap, Young argued that police racially profiled him and engaged in a pretextual stop that initiated the case in the first place. The Court in Young determined that though the statewide data showed disparities in charging and Young offered case specific facts showing a racist pretextual stop, the statewide data did not “make out a particularly strong case of racial profiling.” Numerous others utilizing the RJA in pretrial cases have been stuck in this same hole.

Through the brilliant work of Karina Alvarez and Brett Hammon, the Public Defender’s RJA team presented countywide data that the Court in Young found most compelling to establish a plausible factual foundation for access to the DA’s data on charging disparities. Despite offering the countywide data lacking in Young, the trial court improperly relied on Young, accepting the DA’s arguments and allegation that this was a “fishing expedition based on pure speculation.” The DA and the trial court agreed that to open the DA’s databases, an individual was required to show not only the county-specific data but case specific facts that showed the arresting officers “exhibited bias or animus toward him.” Conveniently, the effect of this decision increases the burden on individuals in data claims by requiring exhibition of bias that would violate PC 745(a)(1). The decision put an extra burden on the individual where none exists in the statute. In overturning the trial court’s order, the appellate court stated that the trial court “appeared to accept” the DA’s argument that the individual’s righteous request for data was simply a “fishing expedition.”

In their final takedown of the order to deny access to data, the appellate court recognized that individuals with countywide data applying were stuck in “something of [a] Catch-22.” The appellate court stated that the individual “cannot make a more specific demonstration of any kind of RJA violation without the discovery he seeks from the People. Insisting upon such a showing at this juncture is circular.” As the appellate court noted and De-Bug, as the cosponsors of AB 256, certainly agrees, the “RJA’s broad and express purposes” permits a reading of the RJA that gives the individual the chance to understand to what degree bias based on race, ethnicity, or national origin affected their charge, conviction, or sentence.

This surprisingly positive court decision, of course, does not go far enough. The appellate court read the RJA as not permitting dismissal of charges, which is not consummate with the system’s overpowering biases that initiate and drive criminal cases. At the very least, the Court should have permitted dismissal where the conduct that violated the RJA initiates the criminal case, itself. Without these SJPD’s racist police practices which target racial minorities, this individual’s life would have gone as normal. Instead, the individual has the chance for his entire life and future opportunities to be controlled by this conviction. With the power of the Santa Clara County Public Defender and community support, we are hopeful the RJA will take its most effective form and be able to intervene in SJPD’s racist policing practices.