Editor’s note: We’re republishing some of our best reads of 2025. Recalls are some of the lowest turnout elections, and yet the consequences can be dramatic. Nothing illustrates this better than Darwin BondGraham’s deep dive into District Attorney Pamela Price’s efforts to grapple with evidence of decades of racial bias in jury selection — and what transpired after Price was recalled and a new chief prosecutor took over. This story originally appeared in October.
When Pamela Price was sworn in as Alameda County District Attorney in 2023, she promised a “reckoning” with the criminal legal system’s injustices, including police and prosecutorial misconduct. And she brought a new philosophy to the DA’s office, focusing on rehabilitation instead of punishment for youth, and reducing the use of prosecutorial tools like enhancements — additional charges that add time to defendants’ sentences.
Price’s agenda came to the fore last year when a federal judge overturned the death sentence of Curtis Ervin because Alameda County prosecutors had engaged in misconduct during his trial in 1991. Another man, Ernest Dykes, who was convicted of murder in 1995, was resentenced and freed from prison last year following the discovery of more evidence of prosecutorial misconduct…