Man Serving Life Gets New Trial After Attorney Described as Racist
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that an African American man serving a life term for a 1989 murder is entitle to a new trial says a federal appeals court. Ezzard Charles Ellis learned, “after his lawyer’s death, that the attorney was a racist who regularly expressed contempt for minority clients.”
“After San Bernardino attorney S. Donald Ames died in 1999, his daughter and others described incidents in which he used racial slurs to refer to nonwhites, particularly African Americans. ”
The “state attorney general’s office, which represented the prosecution in Ellis’ appeal, had agreed that the conviction should be reversed.”
Read the San Francisco Chronicle’s article.
