Days after Dana Stubblefield's 2020 rape conviction was overturned by an appeals court because of “racial language” by the prosecutor during the trial, a lawyer for the former San Francisco 49ers star said he expects Stubblefield to be released from custody within days.
Attorney Allen Sawyer told The Times that he and Kenneth Rosenfeld, who is also Stubblefield's attorney, filed a motion Tuesday in Santa Clara Superior Court to free Stubblefield. A hearing could be held by the end of this week, Sawyer said.
“This hearing will discuss the status of his arrest as the appeals court has overturned his conviction and he has not been sentenced to anything yet, not even a parking ticket,” said Sawyer. “We expect him to be released until the time when he finally comes back under what they call a remittitur from the court of appeals to the court, officially informs them of its postponement and instructs them how to proceed”
Sawyer said he expects the motion to be filed in February, at which time it will be decided whether a retrial can be heard.
Stubblefield played 11 seasons in the NFL for San Francisco, Washington and Oakland, earning defensive rookie of the year (1993) and defensive player of the year (1997) honors during his time with the 49ers.
In May 2016, Stubblefield was charged with raping a woman at gunpoint the previous year. During his trial, Stubblefield's defense argued that the sex was consensual. He was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison in October 2020 after a jury found him guilty of forcible rape, forcible communication and false imprisonment, and that he used a firearm in the first two crimes.
Last week, the Sixth Circuit Court of California overturned Stubblefield's conviction based on the California Racial Justice Act of 2020, which prohibits judges, lawyers, law enforcement officers, among others, from showing “bias or prejudice against a defendant because of the defendant's race, national origin. , or national origin.”
The appeals court's decision was based on language used in prosecutors' closing conference, which began nearly two months after a white police officer killed George Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, and sparked summer protests across the country.
“In conclusion, the prosecutor asserted that the police decided not to search Stubblefield's house. [for a gun] in part because he was a known Black person,” the opinion reads. “The prosecutor said the search would open a 'firestorm of controversy,' and added, 'You can just imagine Morgan Hill when they were searching for an African-American —'” to which the defense attorney objected. The court upheld that decision but did not give the jury instructions or instructions regarding this part of the prosecutor's statements.”
The opinion continued: “We find that the prosecutor violated the Racial Justice Act as codified in part by section 745 of the Penal Code. Prosecutors made it clear that Stubblefield's race was a factor in law enforcement's decision not to search his home. The statement stated that the house may have been searched and the gun found was not Stubblefield who is Black, and that Stubblefield would have gained an unfair advantage during the trial because he was Black.
Second, the claim that the search will “open a storm of controversy” is consistently referred to the events that followed the recent killing of George Floyd, appealing to the discriminatory views of those events and associating Stubblefield with them based on his race. We find the prosecutors' statements constituted 'racially discriminatory language' about Stubblefield's race within the meaning of Penal Code section 745, subdivision (a)(2), and conclude that his conviction was sought or obtained in violation of subdivision (a). … We are required to reverse the conviction and sentence, find it unconstitutional, and order a new trial pursuant to subsection (a).”
The Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office told The Times in a statement Tuesday that it is “reading the opinion.”
In an interview with TMZ on Monday, Rosenfeld said Stubblefield is “thrilled” about the dismissal and Sawyer added that their client is looking forward to being with his family when he is released.
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