California Supreme Court Rejects Claim that Jews Were Kept Off Capital Jury

In the case of In re Freeman, (Cal. Sup. Ct., May 16, 2006), the California Supreme Court rejected the petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed by Fred Freeman who had been sentenced to death for murder. Freeman claimed that Judge Stanley P. Golde, who presided over his trial, had secretly urged the prosecutor, John Quatman, to peremptorily challenge Jewish jurors in order to make it more likely that the jury would impose the death penalty, and that the prosecution exercised challenges on this basis. The referee that the Supreme Court appointed to hear evidence in the habeas case found that there was no factual basis for Freeman's claim, concluding that Quatman's testimony that the alleged improprieties occurred was not credible. (See related prior posting.) Yesterday's Contra Costa Times has more on the case.