ER - Second news release countering racism allegations issued

Second news release countering racism allegations issued
from the Eureka Reporter | by Heather Muller | May 22, 2006

The dispute stemming from two protesters’ allegations of racism against district attorney candidate Worth Dikeman continued through the weekend, with Dikeman’s campaign issuing a second news release countering the allegations and questioning the protest’s timing.

As previously reported in The Eureka Reporter, Ellie Bowman and Madison Ayala have been picketing in front of the Humboldt County Courthouse in Eureka since Friday, holding signs and passing out fliers stating Dikeman is a “racist.”

The women claim Dikeman discriminated against Native Americans during jury selection in the trial of Richard Kesser, a Native American man from Fortuna.

The fliers contained statements Dikeman allegedly made questioning the fitness of Native Americans employed by the tribe to serve on Kesser’s jury. Kesser was convicted of hiring another man to murder Kesser’s ex-wife, but the case has been appealed numerous times based on assertions by the defense that Dikeman excluded jurors on the basis of race.

At the center of the issue is what is known as a “Wheeler Motion,” which is a motion brought during jury selection when one side claims the other has violated the Constitution by challenging jurors because of their race, gender, religion or other constitutionally protected characteristic.

In Petition for Rehearing papers filed by Kesser’s defense and obtained by The Eureka Reporter, Dikeman was accused of striking three Native American and one other non-white juror from Kesser’s jury. The papers stated that these were the only four minority jurors in the jury pool.

In explaining his challenges, Dikeman is quoted in the papers referring to one of the Native American jurors as “darker skinned,” and describing Native Americans employed by the tribe as “resistive of the criminal justice system generally and somewhat suspicious of the system.”

In a Friday news release, the Dikeman campaign stated, “Four courts have found that Dikeman acted properly and without racial animus,” including the Humboldt County Superior Court, the California Supreme Court of Appeal for the First District, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

But it was a different trial that Dikeman’s campaign referred to in a second release Saturday.

“You may wish to know a little more about Ellie Bowman,” the release stated, referring to one of the protesters accusing Dikeman of discrimination.

“Worth Dikeman successfully prosecuted her son, Jeff Bowman, for murder. Bowman went to prison for 25 years to life for the murder of a Trinidad Rancheria tribe member named Julius Aubrey,” the release stated.

Newspaper reports from 2001 indicate that Jeffrey Bowman and two co-defendants were convicted of first-degree murder, burglary and attempted robbery in the stabbing death of Aubrey.

In a Friday news release, the Dikeman campaign called the women’s allegations “a sleazy Gallegos/Salzman/Sterling-Nichols campaign tactic,” referring to Gallegos’ former and current campaign managers Richard Salzman and Alison Sterling Nichols, respectively, “and only demonstrates how desperate they’ve become.”

Nichols called the statement “ridiculous.”

“The Gallegos campaign doesn’t need to tell Native Americans when they should be offended,” she said.

But the debate didn’t end there. Dikeman’s release went on to state, “In fact, only one attorney in the history of Humboldt County has ever had a Wheeler Motion granted against him.”

That attorney, according to the release, was District Attorney Paul Gallegos.

In the case of People v. Mika Myers, the release stated, Judge John Feeney found Gallegos guilty of using peremptory challenges to dismiss prospective jurors based on their race.

Gallegos was quick to note that this was a case that he, as a defense attorney, had tried against Dikeman.

“I was representing a Native American,” Gallegos said, “and Worth was trying to make sure there were no Native Americans on the jury.”

Gallegos said he used some of his peremptory challenges against white jurors — 11 of whom had already been selected for the 12-member panel — because his client wanted to have at least one Native American on the jury.

“I was trying to have a more racially diverse jury,” Gallegos said.

Dikeman insisted that he has never excluded jurors on the basis of race.

“I don’t do it, I haven’t done it and I will never do it,” he said.

A fifth motion to grant Kesser a new trial is pending.

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