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George Floyd’s death continued its ripple effect on the justice system with the recent overturn of a former NFL player’s rape conviction.
(Video: NBC Bay Area)
Emergencies and crises remained the bread and butter for reactionary legislators who knew better than to let such an opportunity go to waste. As such, in addition to efforts at reparations, riots during the 2020 “summer of love” had led to the California Racial Justice Act which led to the overturn of Dana Stubblefield’s rape conviction over the prosecutorial use of “racially discriminatory language.”
Such was the claim of the defense that resulted in an appellate court ruling Thursday that found the former NFL defensive tackle had not had a fair trial ahead of his sentence of 15 years to life in prison for the alleged rape of a developmentally disabled woman he’d interviewed to babysit his children.
“Was it long overdue? It was. Are we thankful? Yes,” said the former player’s attorney Kenneth Rosenfeld to NBC Bay Area. “Did we expect it? We absolutely expected this case to be overturned.”
The attorney had argued the case was “infected with tremendous error from the minute we started the trial,” in 2020 where, according to court documents, prosecutors had said during the trial that a search of the Stubblefield’s home had not been conducted by police and a gun had not been introduced into evidence “based partly on the fact that he was a famous Black man,” and the search “would have opened up ‘a storm of controversy.’”
Dating back to an alleged crime in 2015, the Morgan Hill Police Department had said that the athlete had interviewed the woman for around 20 minutes before later sending her a text message that brought her back to his home that he might pay her for her time. She’d contended that the former footballer had raped her at gunpoint, gave her $80 and dismissed her at which point she had headed over to the police department to report the alleged rape.
DNA evidence recovered on the person of the victim was said to have been a match for Stubblefield whom prosecutors argued hadn’t been properly investigated. The trial had followed the “mostly peaceful protests” brought on by the death of George Floyd while in police custody in May 2020.
After his conviction, California had passed the Racial Justice Act that barred prosecutors from using race as a basis for a criminal conviction or when imposing a sentence. That law took effect in 2021.
While it remained up to the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office whether or not to re-prosecute the case after the conviction and sentence were ruled “legally invalid,” Rosenfeld maintained it wasn’t the prosecution that suffered, but rather the defense as he claimed, “The trial had a biased judge who didn’t allow the evidence from the defense, the fact that she was a sex worker, to be heard in front of a jury.”
The defense expressed intent to have the “case completely dismissed.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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