Alameda County Chief Public Defender Brendon Woods refused to proceed with a misdemeanor trial Thursday after the jury pool in an Oakland courtroom contained no Black prospective jurors, triggering a confrontation with the presiding judge and a partial remedy that legal observers said still left the defendant with slim odds of a Black juror. The defendant, Eboni Route, is a Black Oakland woman facing misdemeanor charges of battery against a police officer and resisting arrest. Woods told Judge Pelayo Llamas that without any Black representation in the panel, Route could not receive a fair trial by her peers.
The standoff surfaced a long-documented pattern in Alameda County: Black residents, who make up roughly one in five of Oakland’s population, are chronically underrepresented in local jury pools — a problem researchers and civil liberties organizations have tied to economic barriers and structural gaps in the summons process, and one that a state-funded remedy program was addressing before Gov. Gavin Newsom paused it in 2025.
Alameda County Chief Public Defender Brendon Woods refused Thursday to proceed with a misdemeanor trial after the jury pool in an Oakland courtroom contained no Black prospective jurors, setting off a confrontation with the presiding judge that ended in a partial concession — a supplemental panel of 56 additional prospective jurors was called — but left the defense warning that the odds of a Black juror being seated remained very small.
The defendant, Eboni Route, is a Black Oakland woman charged with misdemeanor battery against a police officer and resisting arrest. After a couple dozen prospective jurors had been dismissed for hardship — such as risk of lost wages — defense attorney Janeek Mollique, who represents Route, scanned the courtroom and found no Black people remained in the pool.
The courtroom confrontation
Woods appeared in court alongside Mollique and Charles Denton, an assistant public defender with nearly three decades of courtroom experience. Mollique and Denton asked Judge Pelayo Llamas to call in a new panel of potential jurors that would include at least one Black person, arguing that doing so would minimize any perception of bias. Denton cited a 2021 federal appeals court ruling holding that courts have “inherent authority” to manage important processes like jury selection.
“The court has authority to remedy the situation,” Denton said.
Deputy District Attorney James Logan, who supervises the DA’s misdemeanor trial team, objected. Logan argued that if the defense believed the jury selection process was flawed, it could file an appeal once the jury reached a verdict. He cited a 1979 Supreme Court case and said Route’s trial should proceed in the meantime.
Llamas sided with the prosecution, defending the court’s jury-call process and saying he was not willing to assume “that the jurors who show up, because they’re not the same race as Ms. Route, are going to be biased against her.”
At that point, Woods rose from his seat.
“The public defender’s office refuses to proceed with this case to trial,” he said. “This panel is not a jury of our client’s peers. You cannot expect her to have a fair trial without a single Black person on the panel.”
Llamas said he was “troubled” by Woods’ refusal. Denton later said that had Woods refused to proceed indefinitely, the judge could have held him in contempt of court, which carries the risk of jail time.
Motion under the California Racial Justice Act
On the same day, Woods filed a motion under the California Racial Justice Act, arguing that the absence of Black people in the prospective juror pool violated Route’s constitutional right to a fair trial. The act, Woods argued, gives judges authority to dismiss a jury panel and call in a new one if the existing pool would not lead to a fair proceeding.
Llamas denied that motion as well. As a compromise, he said he would ask court administration to call in a supplemental group of prospective jurors for the case while keeping the existing panel in place.
On Friday morning, 56 additional people appeared in Llamas’ courtroom with jury summons cards. Four of them appeared to be Black, according to an estimate by The Oaklandside, the outlet that originally reported the story. When one of the four asked to be excused for hardship because she was recovering from an injury, Llamas denied her request. “I want to keep you in the jury pool,” he told her.
After excusing 20 other prospective jurors for hardship, the judge instructed the remaining group to return Tuesday for voir dire, the questioning process through which attorneys and the judge screen potential jurors for bias.
The defense team said the odds of a Black juror being seated remained very low. Llamas planned to begin voir dire with only the original pool; the supplemental group — including the four individuals who appeared to be Black — would be called only if seats remained unfilled after the first pool was exhausted.
Woods and Mollique asked the judge to merge and randomize both pools to increase the odds that at least one Black person would be seated. The prosecution deferred to the judge rather than take a position. Mollique criticized the prosecution for its silence and for its earlier objection to a new panel.
“We’re in a situation where our very reasonable request is being objected to, and it’s making the defense feel as if the people are trying to whitewash this jury,” she said.
Llamas rejected the request to combine the pools. The public defender’s office said it would proceed with the trial.
A documented pattern in Alameda County
The confrontation brought to the surface a long-running dispute over jury composition in Oakland and Alameda County. Woods has warned the legal community for years about the systematic underrepresentation of Black people on local juries and was featured in a 2024 documentary on the issue. Roughly one in five Oakland residents are Black, he said, yet it is not uncommon for juries in the city to lack any Black representation.
Legal experts largely agree that the problem matters. The Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of an impartial jury of one’s peers has been interpreted, since the 1960s, to require that juries reflect a cross-section of the community where the alleged crime was committed. Prosecutors and defense attorneys may question and exclude jurors who show obvious bias, but they are not permitted to remove jurors solely because of race or other protected characteristics.
Studies have found racially mixed juries make better decisions and are viewed as more legitimate by the public. All-white juries, by contrast, have been found to convict Black defendants at higher rates than juries with at least two people of color.
Black people continue to be wrongfully excluded from juries because of either intentional discrimination or implicit bias — primarily by prosecutors — according to a 2020 report by UC Berkeley Law, which found these problems are “an ever-present feature of jury selection in California.”
The gap in representation also begins earlier, before jury selection, in the process by which people are summoned to serve. A 2010 study by the ACLU of Northern California found that Alameda County “suffers from systemic underrepresentation of African-American and Latino jurors in its jury pools.” Black people made up 18% of the county’s eligible jury pool, the study found, but only 8% appeared for jury duty — a gap the ACLU attributed to various barriers to service.
State juror pay pilot paused
Some efforts have been made to address the structural gap. In 2022, California lawmakers approved a pilot program to increase pay for jurors from $12 to $100 per day and raise travel reimbursements, with the aim of making it more economically feasible for lower-income people to serve on long trials. Alameda County was among the counties that participated.
In 2025, however, Gov. Gavin Newsom clawed back the program’s funding, pausing it indefinitely. Paul Rosynsky, a spokesperson for the Alameda County Superior Court, said the court was “disappointed” by the state’s decision. “The court believed the pilot program could have provided valuable information regarding jury demographics and incentives to attract a more diverse pool,” Rosynsky told The Oaklandside.
Demographic data from the six-month pilot has not been released publicly. The National Center for the State Courts collected the data under a contract with the Judicial Council of California, Rosynsky said.
The district attorney’s office did not respond to questions about its views on jury diversity, the jury selection process, or Route’s case.
Woods said he had no regrets about his intervention. “The fact that we were about to have a trial in Oakland, California, with a Black client who’s pregnant, and the charges were that she assaulted a police officer and resisted arrest, without a single Black juror, required my intervention,” he told The Oaklandside.
Reporting by Roselyn Romero, originally published by The Oaklandside and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.