Either You Believe in the Constitution or You Don’t

A Culture of Cheating and Lies

In 2024, as the Alameda County District Attorney, my team and I uncovered and exposed a 30-year history of unethical prosecutorial misconduct in the Alameda County District Attorney’s office in prosecuting death penalty cases. 

In February 2025, the new tough-on-crime District Attorney stopped the efforts to address the constitutional crisis before she was actually sworn in and while she was still a sitting judge. After she officially became the DA, Ursula Jones Dickson took the position that there is no remedy for the documented constitutional violations and is fighting to keep the death penalty in the remaining 14 cases that were in the process of being resentenced when I left the office.

Hence, the question, does she believe in the Constitution?

Brian Pomerantz Has the Receipts

The juror notes discovered in the files of Alameda County prosecutors clearly show that Black and Jewish jurors were targeted to be kicked off of death penalty juries, under the leadership of District Attorneys Tom Orloff, Nancy O’Malley and John J. Meehan. 

In the words of United States District Court Judge Vincent Chhabria on April 22, 2024, 

These notes - especially when considered in conjunction with evidence presented in other cases - constitute strong evidence that, in prior decades, prosecutors from the office were engaged in a pattern of serious misconduct, automatically excluding Jewish and African American jurors in death penalty cases. 

Brian Pomerantz was lead counsel in three Alameda County capital cases and in 2024, he and Ann-Kathryn Tria were appointed as special settlement counsel in ten capital cases in Alameda.

For their work in these cases, Brian and Ann were awarded the Daily Journal's prestigious CLAY (California Lawyer of the Year) Award in May 2025.

In Southern California, Los Angeles is also grappling with the resentencing case of the Menendez brothers. In 2023, the Menendez brothers presented new evidence that their father had raped another male child and a letter that 17-year-old Erik wrote to a cousin eight months before the murders detailing his father’s sexual abuse. In October 2024, nearly 20 family members, including their mother’s sister, urged Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon to resentence them. 

On October 24, 2024, DA Gascon announced his decision to resentence both brothers to 50 years to life which would make them eligible for parole. In May 2025, the Court overruled the objections of the new tough-on-crime DA and followed DA Gascon's recommendations.

This episode covers:

• what is the remedy for constitutional violations caused by prosecutorial misconduct and cheating to get a conviction in criminal cases
• should the appointed tough-on-crime prosecutor in Alameda County be allowed to stop the resentencing processes even before she took the oath of office, or turn a blind eye to a pattern of serious misconduct based on racism and anti-Semitism
• what has been the result of the efforts by the elected tough-on-crime prosecutor in Los Angeles to fight against the release of the Menendez’ brothers
• what will happen to the Menendez brothers at their upcoming parole hearing now that there is new evidence of sexual abuse by their father
• what does California’s parole release system look like and how many people actually get parole