Ex-Prosecutor Testifies in Jury Probe, Admits Having Violated the Law

Warren Lutz
The Recorder
03-24-2005


With his credibility on the line, a former prosecutor at the center of a death penalty probe began his testimony Tuesday smiling, confident and looking dapper. But by mid-afternoon, John "Jack" Quatman -- who said he colluded with now-deceased Alameda County Judge Stanley Golde to keep Jews off a capital punishment case -- was forced to admit he broke the law.

Nearly two years after his stunning declaration, Quatman -- who spent 25 years in the Alameda County district attorney's office -- is finally filling in the blanks. He took the stand Tuesday in an evidentiary hearing ordered by the California Supreme Court in the appeal of death row inmate Fred Freeman, convicted of robbery and murder in 1987.

In his declaration, Quatman, now a defense attorney in Whitefish, Mont., said Golde told him he "could not have a Jew" on Freeman's jury and recalled that the DA's office had a "standard practice" of excluding Jews and black women from juries in death cases because it was thought that they would not vote for death.

The district attorney's office has vehemently denied those assertions.

During cross-exam Tuesday, Quatman conceded that he was upset with the district attorney's office about being transferred off the DA's "death team" in 1993, adding weight to Chief Assistant Attorney General George Williamson's argument that Quatman has made his allegations because he has a grudge. He also acknowledged that it's "common knowledge that [District Attorney] Tom Orloff and I, from way back when we were deputies, weren't friends."

Whether Quatman is to be believed will be up to Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Kevin Murphy, appointed by the state Supreme Court to conduct the evidential hearing. Murphy must answer two questions: Did Golde really advise Quatman to boot Jews off the jury, and did Quatman actually follow through?

Quatman said he used peremptory challenges against three possible Freeman jurors with Jewish-sounding last names. Williamson got Quatman to acknowledge he didn't particularly like the candidates anyway because of their views on the death penalty.

He also got Quatman to admit fault for booting the potential jurors.

"You knew you were in violation of the law, is that a fair statement?"

"It's a fair statement," Quatman said.

"You wanted to win?" Williamson asked.

"That's correct," he said.

Quatman described his relationship with Golde, who died in 1998, as both personal and professional. He said he invited Golde to his wedding in 1980.

"Judge Golde's courtroom was like no other courtroom I'd been in," Quatman said. "His chambers were like a bazaar."

"There were always people in there. Some of them were drinking coffee, some were reading the newspaper," he said. "There were times I sat on the windowsill to have a spot."

Quatman said that Golde -- who while personally against the death penalty possibly sent more people to die than any other judge in the state's history -- was seen as a mentor to young attorneys.

"[He] had a 25- to 30-cup coffee pot going all the time," Quatman said, measuring the height -- about a foot and a half -- with his hands. "It was one of those big pots. � It wasn't a coffee pot, it was a big urn."

Wearing a charcoal suit with blue stripes, the diminutive Quatman smiled often and shook hands with colleagues during a mid-morning court break following his direct testimony, led by Habeas Corpus Resource Center attorney Gary Sowards.

Under Williamson's cross-examination, however, Quatman grew somewhat unsteady.

Quatman testified he was not happy at being transferred to another division after being disciplined for using a "vulgarity" against another assistant DA, and that he may have told other people he was upset about being reassigned.

Murphy kept a tight hold on the proceedings, forbidding both sides from introducing testimony beyond the scope of the high court's directives.

But he did allow the testimony of Stephen Thaman, a former public defender who represented Christopher Teddy Day, convicted in a capital punishment case in Golde's courtroom immediately preceding the Freeman case. Thaman testified Golde gave attorneys in the Day case five extra peremptory challenges as "freebies."

Quatman said he received "freebies" in the Freeman case, too, but declined to use them. It was then that he was called into Golde's chambers, he said, and admonished for not utilizing them.

"'Quatman, what are you doing?'" he recalled the judge saying before telling him a Jew would never send someone to the gas chamber.

The case is In re Fred Freeman, S122590. The evidentiary hearing was scheduled to continue Wednesday.

As a member of the jewish faith I don't get why we are not wanted on death juries? Have you read the old testament? Have you counted how many offensive behaviors were to be punished by death?

That's why I question whether the "former prosecutor" is telling the truth. He sounds like he has a grudge with the DA.

Incidentally, I don't believe that the Supreme Court has held that it is unconstitutional to strike a juror from a case on religious grounds. In Texas, Judge Baird once wrote such an opinion for the Court of Criminal Appeals, but it was overturned.

Under some very limited circumstances, I could certainly see how a person's religious beliefs might well interfere with their ability to follow the law in a death penalty case. If, for example, their chosen denomination had a strongly held belief that capital punishment was immoral, then they would be faced with a direct moral conflict if they served on a jury.

Richard, are there any Jewish sects that have rejected the death penalty? I know, for example, that the Catholic Church is occasionally outspoken on the death penalty, but I wouldn't automatically strike a Catholic on that basis, as many Catholics are perfectly capable of separating their own personal beliefs from the Pope's statements.

Despite the Holy Father's pronouncements on the death penalty, I have questioned devout Catholics during capital voir dire and found that they give diametrically opposed answers about the death penalty. Similarly, observant Jews have a diversity of opinion on the subject. LDS church members seem uniformly to support capital punishment although I don't know if the church takes a formal position. As a Baptist, I know that each Church is autonomous and opinions vary widely. I read once that Henry Wade preferred Lutherans.

I don't think it would be wise to base a peremptory strike soleley upon a venireman's religion for political and legal reasons. I would hate to be the style case where ths Supremes discovered yet another emanation of a penumbra.

[This message was edited by BLeonard on 03-24-05 at .]

I don't think it was the death penalty that, if true, this judge felt was anti-thetical to jewish venire members. I think he felt they would oppose sending someone to the "gas chamber." The instrumentality for the extermination of so many jews during the holocaust.

That shows how introducing a new fact can change the context. If the judge truly had that in his mind, then he doesn't necessarily come off as anti-Semitic, although his involvement in the case is questionable.

Likewise, if a case involved medical decisions, you might not want a Christian Scientist on the jury, as they believe that prayer is the answer to medical problems.

This whole discussion points out that religious background, unlike race, may justifiably bring with it certain points of view. Of course, it is dangerous to generalize, but that is often what we do during voir dire, given the limited time we have to get to know panel members.

As a certain Harvard president recently discovered, it is dangerous to make those same generalizations regarding gender. But, at least race and gender are immutable characteristics for which the panel member had no choice in receiving. (Even that statement is not absolute, as to gender, given the magic of surgery, but let's leave that discussion for another day.)

Religion is not immutable. And it is, under the best of circumstances, a result of free choice. A prosecutor could form certain inferences from a denomination without being completely unreasonable.

So, setting aside a prosecutor's inappropriate personal hatred for a particular religion, why shouldn't the prosecutor be permitted, just as the defense no doubt does, use that information in deciding whether to accept or reject a particular juror?

There are certainly jews who are against the death penalty but I am not personally aware of one group having espoused a distinct view on that issue that is different from another. American jews are basically divided into Orthodox, Conservative and Reform. As reform jews follow less of the old traditions then Orthodox or Conservative that could factor into their views. Having said that I have always believed that religious affiliation is a poor basis for exercising a strike. I have a general problem with assuming someone's beliefs on issues based on their faith. I think a person would have to be extremely devout, no matter what their stated religious affiliation, for that faith to define how they view criminal justice issues.

Maybe I don't understand exactly whats going (I'm only a layman) but isn't the inability to consider the full range of punishment enough of a reason for a strike?

Witnesses Rip Ex-Prosecutor's Character

Warren Lutz
The Recorder
03-25-2005


For attorneys at Fred Freeman's evidentiary hearing, Wednesday was mostly about damage control.

Chief Assistant Attorney General George Williamson called several witnesses to the stand -- including Alameda County, Calif., District Attorney Tom Orloff -- who slammed Freeman's star witness, a former Alameda County prosecutor who asserts he and others kept Jews off juries in capital punishment cases, including Freeman's.

John "Jack" Quatman, a deputy district attorney in the office from 1972 to 1998, testified Tuesday he colluded with a popular judge to remove Jews from the jury pool for Freeman's 1987 trial in which he was convicted of murder and robbery.

On Wednesday, former colleagues and acquaintances portrayed Quatman as a vicious, vindictive and foul-mouthed prosecutor who seethed with hatred for Orloff.

One witness, Deputy DA Colton Carmine, testified that Quatman once called him into his office to show him a trick on how to get a witness to "cross" to the prosecution's side.

Carmine said Quatman walked over to his desk, pulled out what looked like a plastic bag with rock cocaine inside and threw it on the floor. "'If you don't want to come across, it's that easy,'" Carmine recalled Quatman saying, implying that if the witnesses didn't comply, he could plant drugs on them.

Carmine also testified Wednesday that he attended a 1992 seminar in San Diego where Quatman, a scheduled speaker, told a room of up to 300 district attorneys from around the state to "never, ever" allow Jewish people on a capital punishment jury.

"'I probably shouldn't be saying this,'" Carmine recalled Quatman saying to the audience.

Freeman's attorney, Habeas Corpus Resource Center attorney Gary Sowards, tried to press Orloff about the conference and whether he had any knowledge of the speech. But Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Kevin Murphy sustained a string of objections from Williamson, stopping most of Sowards' questions.

Asked whether his office offered any formal training in questioning potential jurors, Orloff said no.

"People talk all the time, kick ideas around, which is kind of an informal training," Orloff said.

The California Supreme Court called for this week's evidentiary hearing and appointed Murphy as referee. His charge: Find out whether the late Alameda County Judge Stanley Golde told Quatman to dismiss Jews or those with Jewish-sounding names from the potential jury pool, and whether Quatman followed through.

But under such narrowly defined orders, Freeman's attorneys -- who hoped to uncover a larger system of jury discrimination -- ran out of witnesses Wednesday, allowing Williamson to basically run the show.

Witnesses testified that Orloff became the focus of Quatman's anger when the DA -- then the office's chief assistant -- investigated a 1993 complaint that Quatman used "a vulgarity" to describe a co-worker, Assistant DA Terese Drabec.

Quatman's disdain for the DA purportedly grew when Quatman asked him to purge records of Drabec's complaint from his personnel file during Quatman's 1996 campaign for a Contra Costa County judge seat.

"He said, 'shred it,'" Orloff testified. But Orloff said he refused. "It wasn't the right thing to do," he said.

Laurinda Ochoa, an assistant DA in the consumer fraud unit, said Quatman's hatred for Orloff lasted at least until 2000, when she ran into him at a retirement party.

"He said he had talked to people throughout the party, and everyone was in the opinion that our office had gone down," Ochoa testified. "He seemed happy about it ... he was lit up."

Daniel Horowitz, a criminal defense attorney who was friends with both Golde and Quatman, testified he was taken aback when he first heard of Quatman's allegations last year. That was a year after Quatman filed a declaration stating Golde had advised him to kick potentially Jewish jurors from Freeman's case because they would never "vote for death."

Horowitz says he and Golde's sons, Matthew and Ivan, are friends and he was afraid Quatman's allegations would hurt them. Horowitz said he called Quatman.

"I said, what's going on, what's this business about Stanley Golde?" Horowitz said.

"'Yeah, I made some statements like that, but it's not as strong as the papers got it,'" Horowitz recalled Quatman saying.

The case is In re Fred Freeman, S122590. The evidentiary hearing was set to continue Thursday.

Judge Finds Ex-Prosecutor Lied About Tainting Jury
Warren Lutz
The Recorder
04-06-2005

John "Jack" Quatman, whose claims of jury bias against Jews rocked the Alameda County, Calif., district attorney's office, "is dishonest and unethical," a judge found Tuesday.

In a report to the California Supreme Court, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Kevin Murphy said Quatman lied when he said he removed jurors because they were Jewish and when he said he did so at the direction of then-Alameda County Judge Stanley Golde.

Murphy found "ample evidence" that Quatman made up his story to exact revenge on DA Tom Orloff who transferred the longtime prosecutor from capital cases in 1993.

"People do act according to their character, and for that reason, John Quatman's allegations about Judge Golde can't be believed," Murphy concluded.
Quatman testified last month in an evidentiary hearing in the habeas corpus case of Fred Freeman, a convicted murderer that Quatman prosecuted in 1987. In a declaration filed with the California Supreme Court two years ago, Quatman said Golde told him he "could not have a Jew" on Freeman's jury. He also said that excluding Jews and black women from juries in capital punishment cases was "standard practice" in Alameda County.

After the Supreme Court appointed Murphy to investigate Quatman's claims, Chief Assistant Attorney General George Williamson unleashed a brutal attack on Quatman's character, calling former colleagues who testified last month that the 25-year prosecutor routinely lied and cheated to win verdicts.

Murphy sided with those witnesses, writing in his report in In re Fred Freeman, S122590, that he found Quatman's allegations about Golde not only untrue, but that Quatman "never noted that any of the three jurors in question � were Jewish" and had ranked those jurors "zero, four and three, respectively, before exercising peremptory challenges." Quatman had previously testified that he used a 10-point rating system where more desirable jurors were rated with a six or above.

A spokesman for the attorney general's office, which represented the state in the hearing after Murphy found the Alameda County DA had a conflict of interest, said he wasn't surprised by Murphy's findings.

"What was alleged was a clear violation of the defendant's constitutional rights, and that gives the attorney general enormous concern," spokesman Nathan Barankin said. "But as the facts and the evidence produced before the referee demonstrate, there just was no violation that occurred."
Murphy was asked two questions by the Supreme Court: Did Golde advise Quatman to kick Jews off Freeman's jury, and did Quatman use peremptory challenges at trial for that purpose? Murphy found the answer was "no" on both counts.

Scott Kauffman, the California Appellate Project attorney to whom Quatman mentioned the Golde incident casually over dinner, said Tuesday he "felt bad" for Quatman.

"This is a personal conversation that we had, that he gave me permission to talk to [Freeman's attorneys], and it's turned into this circus," Kauffman said.

"You know, [Murphy's finding] surprised me, and I think it's too bad," he said. "I knew what the circumstances were. � There's no question in my mind that it's true."

Freeman's attorney, Gary Sowards of the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, did not return a call seeking comment.

District Attorney Tom Orloff was out of town and would not be available for comment until today, his secretary said.

In his closing arguments in the evidentiary hearing, Williamson suggested Quatman, now in private practice in Whitefish, Mont., made the allegations to get revenge against the DA who transferred him off capital cases in 1993 for a less glamorous assignment.

Several people testified that Quatman hated Orloff for disciplining him after he referred to fellow prosecutor Terese Drabec as a "lazy cunt."
Murphy also made findings of fact involving one of the witnesses, Carol Corrigan, a former senior deputy DA and now a First District Court of Appeal justice. Murphy found Corrigan hadn't had an improper ex parte discussion with Golde, as another witness had claimed.

But Larry Gibbs, a Berkeley attorney who has presented evidence that he says shows Jews were routinely kept off Alameda County juries in capital trials between 1984 and 1994, thinks the judge was far too restrictive.

"The report deals only with what Judge Golde told Quatman on a particular date and in a particular case," Gibbs said. "It does not address the broader question on whether the Alameda County district attorney's office systematically excluded Jews from capital juries."

"I believe he foreordained the outcome," Gibbs said.

Former Prosecutor: Revenge Not at Heart of Bias Claims

Warren Lutz
The Recorder
04-20-2005


Ask him and John "Jack" Quatman will tell you he's in favor of the death penalty.

But the former Alameda County, Calif., prosecutor says he's still haunted by the first man he sent to death row.

His pity is for Fred Harlan Freeman, now in his mid-60s, who has been on death row since 1987 for murder and robbery. It's a case Quatman says should have never garnered a death verdict.

"I brought home what I was sent out to do," Quatman said. "But I felt badly about it."

Today, Quatman has his own troubles to consider: He has been branded a liar for speaking out in the Freeman case, his reputation has been dragged through the mud, and he says he could lose his Montana law license.

Quatman has testified that he removed potential jurors from Freeman's trial because they were Jewish, and that he did so at the advice of now-deceased Alameda County Judge Stanley Golde. But in a report to the California Supreme Court, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Kevin Murphy said Quatman was lying.

Murphy also found "ample evidence" that Quatman made up his story to exact revenge on current DA Tom Orloff, who investigated a co-worker's complaint against Quatman that led to the prosecutor's 1993 transfer off capital cases.

Murphy's findings followed venomous attacks on Quatman's character and ethics from more than a dozen former co-workers, current judges and attorneys, who roundly described the former prosecutor as a vendetta-fueled exaggerator who played "fast and loose" with the rules.

Quatman has tried to keep a low profile. But he decided to address the notion that he was trying to get back at Orloff -- whose office has been hurt by the jury bias allegations.

Quatman, who left the DA's office in 1998 to practice law with his wife, Phyllis, in Whitefish, Mont., said everyone knew he and Orloff weren't buddies. But the revenge theory, he said, is "whacko."

"[It] makes no sense to me," he said. "I had been gone for eight years. To sacrifice one of my convictions and to put myself in the gun sights of the State Bar and possibly put my ticket on the line, how does that get back at Orloff? It doesn't."

Jury bias wasn't even the point of the declaration Quatman submitted two years ago in Freeman's appeal, the former prosecutor said. The assertion takes up only one paragraph of the six-page document. The bulk deals with what Quatman saw as Freeman's poor defense and unfair trial.

On Jan. 11, 1984, according to court documents, Freeman walked into a Berkeley, Calif., bar with two other men, pulled a gun and proceeded to rob the place. When a patron responded, "Fuck you," it was alleged that Freeman shot the man in the side of the head.

Freeman's case passed the DA's death review, but there were problems, Quatman wrote in his declaration. Freeman had prior robbery convictions, but had never hurt anyone. And he foresaw trouble proving Freeman, of the three robbers, actually fired the weapon, whether the shooting was intentional and whether he meant to kill.

"Fred Freeman did not fit the real-world standard for one deserving the death penalty," Quatman wrote.

Quatman said his co-workers were "stunned" when the jury returned a death verdict. Quatman wrote that he "felt sorry for Fred Freeman. � His defense team was worse than ineffective."

According to Quatman's declaration, Freeman's defense attorneys, Spencer Strellis and Robert Braverman, made a number of mistakes, including changing their strategy during the trial. Initially they laid out a case for mistaken identity. But by closing arguments, Strellis "told the jury Freeman was the shooter, but had not intended to kill."

Strellis, who testified at last month's hearing, said he had heard Quatman's assertions, but didn't think much of them.

"Frankly, it's very advantageous for Mr. Freeman if I was incompetent," Strellis said. "So I'm certainly not going to argue with it."

Quatman said he's still in favor of capital punishment -- just not in this case.

"I'm a pro-death-penalty guy. I believe we need to fire up the death penalty system and get it going," Quatman said. "However, on the Fred Freeman case � I felt badly about it because of what I felt was horrible representation on the other side."

Quatman said a new life in Montana and his wife's criminal defense work have changed his outlook on his former role.

"Since Alameda County, I've begun to look at things a little differently," he said. "I've seen more and more the level of defense from the defendant's side of the case, and I'm not sure the system works the way it's supposed to."

That made him consider coming forward about the troubling Freeman case.

"I thought about it for a long time," he said. "I knew what the possible ramifications were � but I think it was the right thing to do.

"If we're going to kill Fred Freeman, maybe we ought to get it squeaky clean."

To return to a side issue, it is a common misconception, even among Catholics, that the Catholic church is categorically opposed to the death penalty. In fact, the church does not teach that the death penalty is necessarily wrong or immoral. The American bishops and the late Pope are against the death penalty, and believe it is no longer justifiable. But those are personal beliefs, which can be accepted or rejected by Catholics.