This writer has consistently stated in this medium that corrupt cops, prosecutors, and judges are the greatest threat to our system of justice. In this case, a potentially guilty man was set free, but the appellate court saw the case differently than the trial judge.
The Oregon Court of Appeals has reversed the murder conviction of a Portland man after finding that prosecutors dismissed two men from the jury pool because they were Black, the same race as the defendant. The jury, which ultimately had no Black members, found Darian L. McWoods guilty of murder by abuse in the death of his 15-month-old daughter, Kamaya Flores, during a trial in Multnomah County Circuit Court in 2018.
In the ruling released Wednesday, Presiding Judge Josephine Mooney found that while Multnomah County Senior Deputy District Attorney Amanda Nadell offered race-neutral reasons to strike both prospective jurors, those arguments were only a “pretext.” “Racial discrimination in the selection of jurors is harmful,” Mooney wrote. “The state did not seek to strike similarly situated jurors who were not Black.” McWoods’ defense attorney at trial, Josephine Townsend, challenged both dismissals under the “Batson” rule, referring to a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision prohibiting the exclusion of prospective jurors based on their race. In an interview, Townsend noted Nadell didn’t use for-cause challenges to remove the two Black jurors. For-cause challenges require evidence that the juror in question can’t be impartial. Instead, both strike-outs proposed by Nadell were peremptory challenges — meaning the prosecutor didn’t have to offer a rationale. After Townsend objected, Nadell raised various problems with the jurors’ answers to questionnaires.
Judge Christopher Marshall accepted both dismissals without commentary. But according to the appellate ruling, Nadell mischaracterized one of the dismissed juror’s answers to the questionnaire, claiming he had rated the police as dishonest when in reality he indicated that officers were usually truthful. In both cases, the appeals court found that non-Black jurors had offered similar responses to the questionnaire as those of the dismissed jurors. “If you have a cookie cutter jury,” Townsend said, “you’re not going to have the breadth of diversity, or the same level or range of life experiences that you can measure against the evidence and the facts.”
Nadell’s supervisor at the time, Amity Girt, served as the lead prosecutor on the case, and Townsend recalled the two working in concert. Girt has since entered private practice. She did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Elisabeth Shepard said the Court of Appeals opinion would be used “to further educate and inform our role in the administration of justice.” “The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office is a learning organization that strives to carry out our responsibilities with integrity and humility,” she said. “We are committed to the ongoing pursuit of a safer, more equitable system.” At trial, prosecutors said the toddler died of “compression asphyxiation,” meaning the toddler was crushed until she could not breathe. Authorities had previously determined that Flores’ died of methadone poisoning and that McWoods had either intentionally given her the substance or that she took it unknowingly, as the father had a habit of mixing drugs into Capri Sun fruit drinks.