Document Category: Testimony about Gangs

This appellate brief argues that mandatory LWOP for an 18-year-old Latine individual violates the California Constitution because LWOP is disproportionately imposed on young people of color. Citing social science and sentencing data, the brief explains how racial stereotypes shape extreme sentencing outcomes that disproportionately expose young Black and Latine people to LWOP. The brief also raises California Racial Justice Act claims based on racially coded gang evidence and courtroom language, citing research on implicit bias, dehumanization, anti-Latine stereotypes, and the historical conflation of Latine identity with gangs and criminality. It challenges testimony treating Spanish, baggy clothes, tattoos, and Latine ethnicity as gang indicators, as well as judicial references to “mad dogging” and “savages.”