A 73-year-old Black man is suing Alameda County and its District Attorney's Office for what he argues was an unconstitutional jury selection process that helped to ensure his conviction 35 years ago.
Curtis Lee Ervin, who now lives in Richmond, was convicted in 1991 in a murder-for-hire plot that left another man's wife, Carlene McDonald, dead, with her body dumped in Berkeley's Tilden Park in 1986. The trial, one of the longest in Alameda County history, ended with Ervin and another man sentenced to death.
Ervin long maintained his innocence, saying that the other man, Robert McDonald, did the actual killing, though police said he had made some incriminating statements linking him to the crime at the time of his arrest.
Still, Ervin has appealed his case almost since he arrived at San Quentin, with his attorneys arguing that the district attorney at the time, James Anderson, had a pattern of "whitewashing" jury boxes, and at the trial of Ervin and McDonald, he had used peremptory strikes to remove nine out of 13 prospective jurors based on their race. In the end, the jury had only one Black member, and there was one Black alternate juror.
A federal judge overturned the conviction and ordered Ervin to be freed in August 2024, and he was ultimately freed in August 2025.
Now, as KTVU reports, Ervin is suing Alameda County and the DA's office, claiming a total of $290 million in damages — $40 million in compensatory damages for the nearly four decades Ervin spent behind bars, and $250 million in punitive damages — for the wrongful conviction and lengthy imprisonment.
"Money is a poor proxy for what he has lost — the ability to chart his own course and the time with loved ones that he can never get back — in short, his freedom," says Ervin's attorney Brian Pomerantz said. "Knowing this, it is our hope to get him compensated as best we can, while also sending a strong message so that no one else will suffer as he has from Alameda County’s decades-long racist policy."
Pomerantz, along with attorney Pamala Sayasane, filed a 33-page complaint in federal court on May 27, hoping to see Ervin get compensated.
Pomerantz further tells KTVU that even in today's Alameda County, he doesn't see the situation much improved.
"The current DA has no interest in remedying the unconstitutional conduct by the office in prior years," Pomerantz tells the station, referring to District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson. "I'm not seeing much difference in Alameda County versus what's happening in Republican counties."
Neither Dickson, nor the county, has yet to comment on Ervin's case.
Top image courtesy of Brian Pomerantz
