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.”
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.”
“We are committed to the ongoing pursuit of a safer, more equitable system,” she said.
At trial, prosecutors said the toddler 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.
Paramedics found the child’s body cold and lifeless about 1 p.m. Dec. 17, 2013, but the investigation stalled for three years because police said both McWoods and his sister claimed to have been watching the child. Authorities say they eventually determined the father had been watching the child alone overnight.
Unless the Oregon Department of Justice appeals the overturned conviction to the state Supreme Court, the case will return to Circuit Court, where it could be retried or dismissed.
Marc D. Brown, the deputy public defender who argued the case before the appellate court, noted that there has been talk for years about removing peremptory strikes from the jury process.
“Everyone hates them or loves them, depending on which side you’re on and what you’re doing,” he said. “They do have this underlying potential for racial and gender bias.”
McWood, who maintained his innocence throughout the trial, is serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Townsend said she believes him, suggesting the poison could have been left in a shared bedroom by another family member.
The 29-year-old remains in custody at the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institute in Pendleton.
— Zane Sparling; zsparling@oregonian.com; 503-319-7083; @pdxzane
