A Santa Clara man convicted of committing multiple sex crimes and attempted murder in Palo Alto lost an appeal in the California Court of Appeal on Aug. 29.
Lionel Blanks Jr. sought to have his conviction and 139-year sentence overturned because the prosecutor’s exclusion of two African American potential jurors during jury selection was racially prejudicial, his appeal claimed.
Blanks was convicted of six felonies by a Santa Clara County jury on May 30, 2012, related to a May 22, 2010, attack on a woman in Palo Alto: rape with the special allegation — kidnapping, tying and binding and causing great bodily injury; penetration with a foreign object, also with the same allegation; attempted murder; carjacking; robbery and terrorist threats.
The victim, in her 20s, testified she was napping in her car at night under a bright streetlight on El Camino Real, a short distance from Serra Street in Palo Alto. She had had a few drinks with friends at a local bar and pulled over to a place she thought was safe.
She said she awoke covered in shattered glass. Blanks dragged her from the car and then beat and bound her. He drove the victim to Westwood Elementary School in Santa Clara, where he raped her in the elementary school field and tried to strangle her. She only survived the attack because she was able to fake her death, she said.
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Jerome Brock sentenced Blanks to a 139-years-to-life prison on July 20, 2012.
Blanks contended in his appeal that the trial court erroneously allowed the removal of the two African American prospective jurors. Blanks is African American. The appeal also maintained that Blanks’ counsel during his trial was ineffective for failing to raise certain objections to expert testimony of a sexual assault response team (SART) nurse.
During Blanks’ trial, Deputy Public Defender Gilda Valeros had challenged the exclusion of the jurors, which Brock rejected.
Deputy District Attorney Erin West gave what are called “race-neutral” reasons for their removal, he ruled.
Prospective Juror No. 6 had told the court of a conviction for an infraction related to minor theft. But she had not told the court of a previous conviction for hit-and-run driving, which lead to concerns about her ability to remain truthful to the court, West told the trial judge.
Potential Juror No. 6 also fit the profile of two other prospective jurors who had been removed from the jury pool: they were single, had no children and were under the age of 40, which was younger than the prosecutor wanted on a jury, West said.
The second prospective juror, No. 15, had a brother who was serving a 12-year sentence he received in Santa Clara County. During questioning she said her brother “got what he deserved.”
But she might be sympathetic to Blanks, who was also facing a harsh sentence if convicted, West had argued. The prosecution had accepted two other jurors who had family members with criminal pasts, but those convictions occurred decades earlier, West noted.
Blanks’ appeals attorney, Julie Schumer, argued the reasons for exclusion were pretexts for discrimination.
But Sixth Appellate District Judges Patricia Bamattre-Manoukian, Franklin D. Elia and Miguel Marquez disagreed. They noted that a 2006 California Supreme Court ruling, People vs. Avila, established that excusing a juror because a sibling has been involved in the criminal-justice system was acceptable. The high court ruled it was a racially neutral reason, even when the potential juror states that he or she could be fair or impartial.
Several other higher-court cases found that the reasons for removing Prospective Juror No. 6 are racially neutral: her tardiness, limited life experience and failure to disclose a prior conviction, the appeals court noted.
The judges also found that the SART nurse had adequate training to be considered an expert; she had performed more than 200 sexual-assault exams and had taken SART training. Therefore Valeros was not ineffective during Blanks’ trial.
State Supreme Court rulings have supported a SART nurse’s qualifications to render an opinion about the causes of a sexual assault, the judges noted.
Schumer could not be immediately reached regarding whether Blanks would seek an appeal to the state Supreme Court.
Grasping at straws keeps lawyers gainfully employed for years.
Let’s not be too hard on the lawyers, who are under a fiduciary duty to do their best for their client. Sometimes those Hail Mary passes carry the day, and if you do not try, you never know. And sometimes
representing bad guys is like holding a wolf by the ears, where at the end of the day the trick is to get away without getting bitten by your own client.