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By Forum Staff Citing decades-old evidence of improper discrimination based on race, sex, religion, and ethnicity in jury selection, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced Thursday that she has filed a joint motion with defense counsel at the law firm Covington & Burling, LLP, to vacate the convictions of Santiago Valdez and Paul Morant, who were convicted in 1996 and remain incarcerated. Upon reversal of their convictions, Katz is requesting the defendants be remanded to pretrial detention and re-prosecuted. The motion is based on documents found in the Queens DA’s Office’s file...

Queens state Supreme Court Justice Joseph Zayas called the notes “abhorrent” and “a smoking gun” of discrimination. “The document explicitly instructs prosecutors to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion and ethnicity, all in clear violation of well established constitutional law,” he said. Both sides in a trial are allowed to eliminate a certain number of potential jurors without giving a reason, in what are known as “peremptory challenges.” But a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibits prosecutors from excluding prospective jurors solely because of their race,...