A California appeals court has overturned the rape conviction of former San Francisco 49ers star Dana Stubblefield after deciding that prosecutors made racially discriminatory statements during the trial. The retired football player Stubblefield, who is Black, was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison back in October 2020 after being convicted of raping a developmentally disabled woma.
The Sixth Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that prosecutors violated the California Racial Justice Act of 2020, which was enacted amid a summer of protests over George Floyd’s police killing. The appeals court stated that prosecutors used “racially discriminatory language” in their decision to reverse Stubblefield’s conviction for an alleged offence centred on the charge that Stubblefield recruited the then-31-year-old lady with a promise of a babysitting job.
The lady told local police that Stubblefield, who played in the NFL from 1993 to 2003, raped her at gunpoint, then handed her $80 and let her go. The police report said that the DNA evidence matched that of Stubblefield. Stubblefield’s defence attorneys claimed that there was no rape and that Stubblefield paid the woman for consensual sex.
“The trial had a biassed judge who refused to allow the defense’s evidence, which was that she was a sex worker, to be heard in front of a jury,” attorney Kenneth Rosenfeld stated. He described the encounter as a “transactional occasion” between Stubblefield and the woman. The case was “infected with tremendous error from the minute we started the trial,” according to Rosenfeld.
Stubblefield, the NFL’s Defensive Rookie of the Year and later the NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 1997, will remain in detention until a hearing at which his counsel will request that a judge grant a move to free him.