Two men whose murder convictions were overturned after findings of prosecutorial misconduct are now suing Alameda County, alleging the district attorney’s office used discriminatory jury-selection tactics for years to bolster a tough-on-crime reputation.
Ernest Dykes has filed a federal lawsuit over his 1995 trial, contending prosecutors denied him a fair hearing by striking the only Black prospective juror who reached the final stage of selection. Dykes, who is Black, says prosecutor Colton Carmine used a peremptory challenge to remove that juror even though it is unconstitutional to exclude prospective jurors because of race, ethnicity, religion or sex.
In the complaint, Dykes acknowledges that he shot and killed 9-year-old Oakland boy Lance Clark during an attempted robbery of the child’s grandmother. He says the shooting was accidental and argues Carmine ignored both his remorse and his limited criminal record when charging him with first-degree murder and pursuing the death penalty. Dykes spent 31 years in custody, much of that time on Death Row at San Quentin State Prison. He was released in June 2025 after the district attorney’s office conceded misconduct, a judge vacated the death sentence and Dykes was resentenced to voluntary manslaughter.
Dykes is seeking $32 million for pain and suffering, including damages tied to what he says was inadequate medical treatment in prison, along with $250 million in punitive damages from the county. Alameda County and a representative for the district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
His case follows another civil suit filed May 27, 2026 by Curtis Lee Ervin, another East Bay man whose murder conviction was also undone. Attorney Brian Pomerantz, who represents both men, said the alleged misconduct had consequences far beyond the defendants themselves. “Curtis Ervin and Ernest Dykes lost decades of their lives, but it’s not just them who are threatened by this kind of behavior. It’s all the people living in Alameda County; everyone is threatened by a DA’s office that thinks this kind of discrimination was OK.”
Ervin was sentenced to death in 1991 for the 1986 murder-for-hire killing of Carlene McDonald of Pinole, and he spent 33 years on Death Row at San Quentin. In July 2024, the state attorney general’s office acknowledged that prosecutor James Anderson had discriminated against Black and Jewish prospective jurors during Ervin’s trial, a violation that ultimately led to Ervin’s release from prison in August 2025.
Ervin is seeking $40 million in damages, saying he endured years of wrongful incarceration, lack of meaningful access to family and loved ones, harsh daily confinement in a small cell that harmed his mental and physical health, and inadequate medical care and nutrition. He is also asking for $250 million in punitive damages, arguing that supervisors in the district attorney’s office tolerated unlawful practices and were “indifferent to violations of fair trial rights.” In the suit, his lawyers, Pomerantz and Pamala Sayasane, wrote, “Because of the unconstitutional conduct, Mr. Ervin was incarcerated for 25 years, 3 months, and 7 days longer than he should have been.” Alameda County did not respond to a request for comment on Ervin’s case.
Both lawsuits say office leaders from the 1980s through the 2000s failed to properly train or monitor prosecutors handling homicide cases. The complaints go further, alleging that biased jury-strike practices were well known inside the office and effectively encouraged by management.
The allegations gained traction in 2024, when prosecutors’ jury-selection notes from Dykes’ trial were uncovered and provided to defense lawyers and a federal judge. Those notes showed prospective Black and Jewish jurors being singled out for exclusion and described in derogatory terms. One note about a potential juror read, “I liked him better than any other Jew But No Way.”
Dykes’ lawsuit says Carmine used a red pen to identify people he wanted removed and that “every Black or Jewish potential juror received a red mark.” Of the 60 people called as potential jurors in Dykes’ case, six were Black. Only one of those six made it into the jury box for questioning by the lawyers, and Carmine then struck that person. Dykes was ultimately tried before a jury with no Black jurors.
Ervin’s attorneys describe a similar pattern. They say his jury pool included 110 people, 17 of them Black, and that Anderson used what he called a “Rambo scale” to gauge how willing prospective jurors were to impose the death penalty. According to the suit, even some Black prospective jurors who rated themselves highly as death-penalty supporters were removed anyway. Anderson allegedly used peremptory challenges to strike nine of the 11 Black prospective jurors who advanced far enough to be considered, leaving one Black juror and one Black alternate.
In an April 2024 ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria said the jury-selection notes were “strong evidence that, in prior decades, prosecutors from the office were engaged in a pattern of serious misconduct, automatically excluding Jewish and African American jurors in death penalty cases.” He ordered then-District Attorney Pamela Price to review 34 capital cases tried by Alameda County prosecutors from the early 1980s into the early 2010s.
That review uncovered additional evidence of misconduct, and Price moved to seek resentencing in many of those cases. Some defendants received reduced sentences, and five were released, including Dykes in June 2025 and Ervin in August 2025.
After voters recalled Price in November 2024, Ursula Jones Dickson was appointed district attorney in January 2025. She later pulled back from Price’s approach, filing motions in many resentencing matters to withdraw the earlier petitions and effectively resisting changes to numerous older murder convictions. Jones Dickson has said the prior effort moved too quickly, that some victims’ families were not properly contacted and that some defendants had not shown rehabilitation. Defense lawyers have responded by accusing her in court of trying to stop additional evidence of past misconduct from emerging.
Pomerantz said the county and current district attorney’s office have still not done enough to ensure the same conduct cannot happen again. “I don’t know of another jurisdiction where something like this went on for so long and then was admitted, and there was so much information supporting the wrongdoing,” he said.
Both Carmine and Anderson are retired, and attempts to reach them for comment were unsuccessful. Pomerantz also said the county Board of Supervisors has not treated the issue with sufficient seriousness. “If the county Board of Supervisors didn’t recognize what this was,” he said, “well now with $500 million in lawsuits against them, they’ll certainly now recognize what this is.”