Bad Blood Between Alameda County DAs Boils Over Ahead of Recall Vote

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price and her predecessor, Nancy O’Malley, have years’ worth of bad blood between them. Now, with Price’s tight recall election less than two weeks away, their jabs at each other are escalating.

After O’Malley announced Wednesday that she was backing Price’s recall, Price questioned the timing — suggesting in her own press conference hours later that the endorsement was motivated by her plans to reveal the district attorney’s office’s history of prosecutorial misconduct. Price said she had evidence that, under past administrations, the office covered up its practice of excluding Black and Jewish jurors from death penalty cases.

“What the public should know is that this is a sign apparently that we must be getting close to uncovering the role that Ms. O’Malley played as the former leader of this office when the prosecutorial misconduct actually was taking place,” Price said.

Price revealed a 2004 note from a former district attorney’s office employee, which she said shows that Morris Jacobson — then a senior prosecutor in the office and now an Alameda County Superior Court judge — covered up the misconduct, going “to great lengths to distract the courts.”

A spokesperson for O’Malley, who served as district attorney from 2009 to January 2023, said in a statement that she was not the district attorney when the alleged misconduct occurred.

“These false or misleading allegations by [Pamela] Price demonstrate my point that Price is unqualified to hold public office,” O’Malley told KQED via email. “Price is dishonest. She manufacturers cocktails of misinformation that deliberately mix falsehoods with a dash of data with the intent to deceive. [Price] will pay a price for her deceptions on election day.”

Price was ordered by a federal judge to review Alameda County death penalty cases in April after evidence was found indicating that the district attorney’s office may have systematically excluded Black and Jewish jurors in the case of Ernest Dykes, who is still on death row for the 1993 killing of a 9-year-old boy.

Amid the investigation, Price said she found a note suggesting Jacobson and other office employees attempted to distract from allegations made by whistleblower Jack Quatman, a former capital trial prosecutor. He signed a declaration saying he and others routinely struck Black women and Jewish people from juries in death penalty cases.

The note reads: “[Jacobson] saying he would give us direction. Wants to find dirt on Quatman.”

It was written in a meeting led by Jacobson preparing for an evidentiary hearing in 2004 over the case of Fred Freeman, in which Quatman was a prosecutor. Freeman was convicted of murder in 1987 and died of natural causes in 2009 while on death row.

“Prosecutors have special duties as ministers of justice, not simply to secure a conviction, but to uphold the Constitution, which guarantees the right to a fair trial and to be judged by a jury of one’s peers, regardless of race, religion or any other considerations such as sexual orientation,” Price said during the press conference.

Price and O’Malley have sparred for years. Price ran an unsuccessful campaign to unseat O’Malley in 2018 and beat out her deputy, Terry Wiley, with 53% of the vote in 2022.

She’s accused O’Malley of creating a “culture of fear,” not pursuing prosecutorial misconduct and leaving the office in “disarray.”

O’Malley said Wednesday that Price had used the office improperly.

“She uses it to intimidate,” O’Malley said, announcing her endorsement of the recall. “Of course, she takes any chance to criticize me erroneously for things that I didn’t do.”

Whether or not Price will remain in office and continue to lead this investigation will be up to voters on Nov. 5.