Two men who spent a combined 64 years on California's Death Row after being convicted in trials where prosecutors deliberately excluded Black and Jewish jurors have filed federal civil rights suits against Alameda County demanding $572 million in damages — the largest financial reckoning yet from a pattern of prosecutorial misconduct that ran unchecked for more than two decades.

The suits arrive at a politically charged moment: the DA who ordered a review of the tainted convictions was recalled by voters in 2024, and her successor has already reversed course on examining the remaining death penalty cases — leaving taxpayers potentially on the hook for more than half a billion dollars while the office quietly retreats from accountability.

Ernest Dykes filed suit June 24 in federal court against the Alameda County District Attorney's office. Curtis Lee Ervin filed his suit on May 27. Both men are represented by attorney Brian Pomerantz, who argues that the discriminatory practices were not isolated acts by rogue prosecutors but an institutionalized strategy — one that DA leadership either encouraged or willfully ignored for more than two decades.

"I don't know of another jurisdiction where something like this went on for so long and then was admitted, and there was so much information supporting the wrongdoing," Pomerantz told Berkeleyside.

The misconduct came into stark relief in 2024, when handwritten notes taken by former Alameda County prosecutor Colton Carmine during jury selection in Dykes' 1995 murder trial surfaced and were turned over to defense attorneys and a federal judge. The notes showed that Carmine marked every Black and Jewish prospective juror in red for elimination. About one candidate, Carmine wrote: "I liked him better than any other Jew But No Way."

U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria reviewed those notes and ruled in April 2024 that they constituted "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." He ordered then-DA Pamela Price to conduct a review of 34 capital cases prosecuted by the office from the early 1980s through the early 2010s.

As that review proceeded, five men were released from prison, including Dykes and Ervin. Dykes, who served 31 years — most of it on Death Row at San Quentin — was resentenced on a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter after the DA's office conceded misconduct and a judge vacated his original conviction. He was convicted in 1995 of killing 9-year-old Lance Clark during a robbery attempt, a death Dykes says was unintentional; his suit argues that prosecutor Carmine ignored his remorse and limited criminal history in charging him with first-degree murder and pursuing death.

Ervin's case followed a parallel arc. Sentenced to death in 1991 for a murder-for-hire conviction, he spent 33 years at San Quentin before the state attorney general's office conceded that his trial prosecutor, James Anderson, had also discriminated against Black and Jewish jurors. He was freed last year.

Now both men are seeking to hold the county financially accountable. Dykes is demanding $32 million in compensatory damages — for pain, suffering, and what his suit describes as inadequate medical care behind bars — plus $250 million in punitive damages. Ervin is seeking $40 million compensatory and another $250 million punitive. Together: $572 million.

The suits argue that DA leadership from the 1980s through the 2000s not only failed to train and supervise prosecutors, but actively tolerated discrimination as a tool for building a "tough on crime" political image — a claim that broadens potential liability beyond individual misconduct to institutional policy.

Pomerantz framed the stakes in terms that extend beyond his clients. "Curtis Ervin and Ernest Dykes lost decades of their lives, but it's not just them who are threatened by this kind of behavior," he told Berkeleyside. "It's all the people living in Alameda County; everyone is threatened by a DA's office that thinks this kind of discrimination was OK."

That reckoning is landing in an office that has since moved in the opposite direction. Price — who ordered the misconduct reviews — was recalled by voters in November 2024. Her successor, Ursula Jones Dickson, has since reversed course on examining additional death penalty convictions from the same era. Three other men freed under Price's review could also pursue civil claims. Alameda County did not respond to Berkeleyside's requests for comment on either lawsuit.

The scale of potential liability — for a pattern of racism the county's own courts have already acknowledged — now falls squarely on the Board of Supervisors.