On Thursday, December 27, 2024, the Santa Clara County Sixth District Court of Appeals vacated ex-49er Dana Stubblefield’s rape conviction as well as his prison sentence. The decision was based on a finding that the prosecution’s statements at trial violated the California Racial Justice Act of 2020 and “constituted racially discriminatory language” about the former NFL star’s race. This required the appeals court to overturn Stubblefield’s conviction.
The former San Francisco 49ers star was not initially released from custody. “The court had to wait for the remittitur to come back from the appellate court before they make a final decision of [offer] bail,” said Allen Sawyer, co-counsel of Kenneth Rosenfeld on the Dana Stubblefield matter. Subsequently, Kenneth Rosenfeld and Allen Sawyer filed a motion for Stubblefield’s release, which they anticipate to occur in February.
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Legal Red Tape
Although Stubblefield’s rape conviction was overturned, he had to remain in Corcoran State Prison, where he was held for almost 48 months, while awaiting a bail hearing. Superior Court Judge Hector Ramon ruled that he “did not have the jurisdiction to hold a bail hearing,” because the case was “still under the purview of the Sixth District Court of Appeals,” the same court responsible for vacating his conviction and sentence in late December 2024. In late January, however, Deputy Attorney General Moona Nandi concluded that Ramon “did indeed have jurisdiction to evaluate bail” (courtesy The Mercury News, Feb 2, 2025).
Case History
In 2016, Dana Stubblefield was charged with rape; however, his defense team (Rosenfeld and Sawyer) argued that the sex was consensual. The Rosenfeld Law Firm won half of the counts and the other half were under appeal until December of 2024 when the Appellate Court made its decision to overturn the rape conviction.
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