Supreme Court of California Reverses Death Sentence Because Prosecutor Compared Defendant to a Bengal Tiger
California’s Racial Justice Act of 2020 states, inter alia, that
Existing precedent tolerates the use of racially incendiary or racially coded language, images, and racial stereotypes in criminal trials. For example, courts have upheld convictions in cases where prosecutors have compared defendants who are people of color to Bengal tigers and other animals, even while acknowledging that such statements are “highly offensive and inappropriate” (Duncan v. Ornoski, 286 Fed. Appx. 361, 363 (9th Cir. 2008); see also People v. Powell, 6 Cal.5th 136, 182-83 (2018)). Because use of animal imagery is historically associated with racism, use of animal imagery in reference to a defendant is racially discriminatory and should not be permitted in our court system (Phillip Atiba Goff, Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Melissa J. Williams, and Matthew Christian Jackson, Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization, and Contemporary Consequences, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2008) Vol. 94, No. 2, 292-293; Praatika Prasad, Implicit Racial Biases in Prosecutorial Summations: Proposing an Integrated Response, 86 Fordham Law Review, Volume 86, Issue 6, Article 24 3091, 3105-06 (2018)).
Yesterday, the Supreme Court of California applied this statutory section to reverse the death sentence of Anthony George Bankston, who had been convicted of the first degree murder of Benson Jones; the willful, deliberate, and premeditated attempted murder of Benjamin Jones; and possession of a firearm by a felon.
In the case,
At the close of her argument, the prosecutor said: “[W]e see him here in court. We know that he’s able to represent himself. You see him in a nice little tie and a suit. You see that he’s articulate. But, ladies and gentlemen, the person that we see here in court is not the person that was out on the streets, it’s not the person that conducts himself in the manner in which we heard about in custody.
“There’s a little story called the Bengal tiger. We have a journalist going to the zoo … and he sees a plaque. And the plaque says … Bengal tiger…. This tiger is just kind of laid out, real lethargic…. Behind him he hears a voice who says, ‘That’s not a Bengal tiger.’ And the guy … turns around and says, ‘What are you talking about? The sign says that.’…. So the two of them make a wager, and they go off to India in search of a Bengal tiger. As they go into the jungle[ ] deeper and deeper, the journalist … comes along a clearing and he sees this enormous tiger. He sees the muscles all flexed out, he sees the claws out, he sees the fangs, … he hears the growl. And he runs back to the hunter and the hunter says, ‘Now you see a Bengal tiger.’ ”