PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Oregon Court of Appeals has overturned the 2018 murder conviction of a Portland man after finding that prosecutors dismissed two men from the jury pool because they were Black.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reports the jury, which had no Black members, found Darian L. McWoods, a Black man, guilty of murder by abuse in the death of his 15-month-old daughter, Kamaya Flores, in Multnomah County Circuit Court.
In the ruling released Wednesday, Presiding Judge Josephine Mooney found that Multnomah County Senior Deputy District Attorney Amanda Nadell offered race-neutral reasons to strike both prospective jurors, but those arguments were only a “pretext.”
Mooney wrote that the state did not seek to strike similarly situated jurors who were not Black.
