Former 49ers star Dana Stubblefield could be released this week after 2020 rape conviction is reversed

Chuck Schilken, Los Angeles Times on Dec 31, 2024

Published in Football

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LOS ANGELES — Days after Dana Stubblefield’s 2020 rape conviction was reversed by an appellate court because of “racially discriminatory language” by the prosecution during the trial, an attorney for the former San Francisco 49ers star said he expects Stubblefield to be released from custody within days.

Attorney Allen Sawyer told The Los Angeles Times that he and Kenneth Rosenfeld, a fellow attorney also representing Stubblefield, filed a motion Tuesday with the Superior Court of Santa Clara for Stubblefield’s release. A hearing could be held by the end of this week, Sawyer said.

“This hearing is just going to be addressing the status of his custody now that the appellate court has reversed his conviction and he’s not at this point convicted of anything, not even a parking ticket,” Sawyer said. “We expect that he should be released until the time when it eventually comes back under what they call a remittitur from the appellate court to the trial court, officially notifying them of the reversal and instructing them on how to proceed”

Sawyer said he expects the remittitur to take place in February, at which time it will be decided if a retrial might be heard.

Stubblefield played 11 seasons in the NFL for San Francisco, Washington and Oakland, earning defensive rookie of the year (1993) and defensive player of the year (1997) honors during his time with the 49ers.

In May 2016, Stubblefield was charged with raping a woman at gunpoint the previous year. During his trial, Stubblefield’s defense argued that the sex was consensual. He was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison in October 2020 after a jury found him guilty of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and false imprisonment, and that he had used a firearm in committing the first two offenses.

Last week, California’s Sixth Court of Appeals reversed Stubblefield’s conviction based on the California Racial Justice Act of 2020, which prohibits judges, attorneys, law enforcement officer, among others, from exhibiting “bias or animus towards the defendant because of the defendant’s race, ethnicity, or national origin.”

The appellate court’s decision was based on language used in the prosecution’s closing argument, which began nearly two months after a white police officer killed George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, and sparked a summer of protests nationwide.

“In closing arguments, the prosecutor asserted the police made the decision not to search Stubblefield’s house [for a gun] based partly on the fact that he was a famous Black man,” the opinion reads. “The prosecutor claimed a search would have opened up ‘a storm of controversy,’ and added, ‘Can you imagine in Morgan Hill when they search an African-American —,” whereupon defense counsel objected. The trial court sustained the objection but gave the jury no admonishments or instructions with respect to this part of the prosecutor’s arguments.”

The opinion continued: “We find the prosecution violated the Racial Justice Act as codified in part at Penal Code section 745. The prosecution explicitly asserted Stubblefield’s race was a factor in law enforcement’s decision not to search his house. The statement implied the house might have been searched and a gun found had Stubblefield not been Black, and that Stubblefield therefore gained an undeserved advantage at trial because he was a Black man.

“Second, the claim that a search would ‘open up a storm of controversy’ implicitly referenced the events that followed George Floyd’s then-recent killing, appealing to racially biased perceptions of those events and associating Stubblefield with them based on his race. We find the prosecution’s statements constituted ‘racially discriminatory language about’ Stubblefield’s race within the meaning of Penal Code section 745, subdivision (a)(2), and we conclude his conviction was sought or obtained in violation of subdivision (a). ... We are required to vacate the conviction and sentence, find that it is legally invalid, and order new proceedings consistent with subdivision (a).”

The Santa Clara County Office of the District Attorney told The Times in a statement Tuesday that it is “studying the opinion.”

In an interview with TMZ on Monday, Rosenfeld said Stubblefield is “euphoric” over the reversal of his conviction and Sawyer added that their client is looking forward to being with his family upon his release.