Murderers Seek to Overturn Convictions Under California’s Racial Justice Act

Four condemned murderers are asking the California Supreme Court to overturn their convictions and death sentences claiming that racial prejudice influenced the jury verdicts against them. In 2020 the California Legislature passed AB 2542, called the Racial Justice Act (RJA), which Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law. The Act, in part, allows a convicted criminal to challenge their conviction or sentence if a judge, attorney, law enforcement officer, expert witness, or juror exhibited bias or animus towards the defendant because of their race, ethnicity, or national origin, or if one of those same actors used racially discriminatory language during the trial. The Act also declares that if an RJA error has occurred, the defendant shall be ineligible for the death penalty. On September 9, 2022, the Legislature passed and Governor Newsom signed AB 256, the Racial Justice For All Act, which applies the RJA retroactively to criminals convicted at any time for any crime including murderers convicted and sentenced to death decades ago.

In 2024 murderers Anthony Bankston, Marcos Barrera, Run Peter Chhuon and Samreth Sam Pan, all convicted over two decades ago, filed additional supplemental petitions with the state Supreme Court claiming that their convictions violated the Racial Justice Act.

Anthony Bankston, a street gang member with multiple violent priors, was convicted in 1995 for the murders of Noel Sanchez and Benson Jones and the attempted murder of Benjamin Jones and the assault with a firearm of Linda Jones. Bankston shot all the victims in the afternoon on a street in the Firestone district of Los Angeles because he thought the Jones’ were members of a rival street gang. Bankston, who is black, now claims that his conviction violated the RJA because an expert on gangs testified at trial about the behavior of black street gangs and because the prosecutor compared him to a Bengal tiger.

Marcos Barrera, who had sired 15 children by two women, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2001 for the torture/murder of his five-year-old son and two-year-old daughter. Their bodies were discovered buried in the foothills outside of Los Angeles by police officers who spotted Barrera, who had just finished burying the son. At trial the pathologist testified that both children had multiple blunt force injuries including broken bones, damaged internal organs and evidence of starvation. Testimony at trial indicated that Barrera had beaten both children every day with belts, electrical cable, broomsticks, shoes and that he also threw the children against the wall and regularly left them tied up for days at a time. In his latest petition Barrera claims that his trial violated the RJA by asking prospective jurors about their ability to be impartial during the trial of a person of Mexican descent. He also claims that by telling jurors that he forced his children to walk the streets all day selling corn while he refused to work, demonstrated racial prejudice. In her closing argument the prosecutor referred to Barrera as an animal which he claims also violated the RJA.

In 1995, Samreth Sam Pan and Run Peter Chhuon were members of a Cambodian street gang called the Tiny Rascals. Pan’s street name was “Rusty” and Chhuon’s was “Chaka.” Both were convicted and sentenced to death for the Sacramento home invasion robbery and murder of a father and son and the attempted murder of the wife and mother, and the attempted murder of one man and the murder of another during a gang-related drive-by-shooting in Pomona. At Chhuon’s penalty-phase trial, the prosecution presented unchallenged evidence of seven other murders he committed that same year—the torture-murders of a mother and father in front of their young children in Seattle, and five murders during an incident in San Bernardino, when “Chhuon[1] and fellow gang members killed the entire Nguyen family except for a three-year-old child who was wounded but survived. In their supplemental petitions to the Court both Pan and Chhuon claim that prosecutors violated the RJA by using alleged anti-Asian racial stereotypes by identifying them as members of a Cambodian street gang.

None of these murderers are claiming that they are not guilty. They are arguing that the Racial Justice Act requires that their convictions and sentences be overturned because someone referred to their ethnicity during their trial or sentencing.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta supports the Racial Justice Act and opposes the death penalty yet, in these cases, he is obligated to argue that the Act doesn’t apply to them and the death sentences for these murderers be upheld.

The Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation has joined People v. Barrera, People v. Chhuon & Pan, and People v. Bankston to argue that the Racial Justice Act is unconstitutional and that the claims raised by the murderers are at best, harmless error.

In a scholarly amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief CJLF Legal Director Kent Scheidegger points out that the California Constitution specifies what type of error in a criminal trial is of such magnitude that it invalidates a conviction or sentence. The Constitution requires a “harmless error analysis” to determine the seriousness of a claimed error and the likelyhood that it effected the jury’s verdict. Multiple Supreme Court decisions have upheld this requirement for over a century. The RJA creates a class of supposed trial errors that can invalidate a conviction without any process for determining their relationship to the guilt of the defendant or their impact on the jury’s verdict. Because no legislative statute can amend the constitution, the RJA is invalid. The CJLF brief also notes that in 1978 California voters adopted Proposition 7 to restore the death penalty for the state’s worst murderers. The legislature cannot amend that initiative to invalidate the death penalty for convicted murderers claiming RJA errors unless the voters do so with another initiative.

“The Racial Justice Act ignores the state constitution and the will of California’s voters to address so- called errors at trial that were not actually biased, caused no harm, and have nothing whatever to do with the question of the just punishment for the crime committed. The Supreme Court should acknowledge the fact that it is unconstitutional,” said Scheidegger.