Kevin Barton Committed Illegal Race Discrimination. Here’s The Full Story Behind The Court’s Ruling.

In 2019, a Oregon Court of Appeals found that Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton committed illegal racial discrimination against a Black prospective juror. 

Just how egregious does a prosecutor’s discrimination need to be to result in a reversal? 

The race discrimination finding against Barton is only the second time an Oregon appellate court has reversed a case due to this type of misconduct by a prosecutor. 

Even though the Constitution prohibits race-based discrimination against jurors, it is almost impossible to prove under the current rule: a court must determine that any non-racial justification offered up by the prosecutor was a lie. 

That’s exactly what the Oregon appellate court found: No race-neutral reasons could explain Kevin Barton’s actions. Though Barton’s nefarious conduct made local headlines, no one has fully explained how egregious and unusual his behavior really was. 

So, here’s what happened:

Barton was the prosecuting attorney in the criminal trial of Anthony Lenaire Curry, a Black man. Three young college students were in the jury pool: two of them were white. The third was Black—and he was the only Black person in the jury selection that day.  

The law allows prosecutors to use a certain number of “peremptory strikes” to remove a juror for little or no reason at all, with some constitutional limitations. One of those limitations is that a juror cannot be removed solely because that person is Black. 

Kevin Barton allowed the two white students to serve on the jury, but eliminated the Black juror. 

Barton said that he struck the Black juror because he “didn’t like unemployed college students on his juries.” But the court didn’t buy Barton’s excuse. 

Why? 

Barton did not strike the two white unemployed college students. 

The only reasonable conclusion, according to the Court, was that Barton preferred an all-white jury against a Black defendant. 

The Court said that Barton’s “articulated race-neutral reason for excluding [the Black juror]—that he was a young, unemployed college student—does not hold up, and it is not reasonable to view that articulated reason as anything other than a pretext for race, and possibly gender, discrimination.” 

Again, of tens of thousands of criminal cases throughout Oregon, there have been only two occasions when this kind of misconduct by a prosecutor was so egregious and obvious that the Court felt compelled to reverse the case: one of them is Kevin Barton. 

One might imagine that Barton responded with remorse, or at least with a dose of humility. But that’s not what happened. 

Barton exploded, rambling at length about how he was not the racist, the defense attorney was the racist for daring to mention that Barton had removed the only Black juror. 

“He’s racist because he is saying that a juror belongs on this jury simply because of his race,” Barton fumed. “I know attorneys aren’t supposed to be offended, but I am offended.” 

The Court gave Barton’s angry, blame-shifting behavior a blistering rebuke, explaining that it was not only inappropriate, but harmful to the justice system itself. This country cannot “realize its promise of eliminating impermissible discrimination” if challenges to such conduct “devolve into what happened here.” 

“This case is extra disturbing given that it happened just a few years ago and the prosecutor involved is now the elected DA,” said Aliza Kaplan, professor and director of the Criminal Justice Reform Clinic at Lewis and Clark Law School. “Oregon has such a small Black population that it’s rare to have more than 1 or 2 people in a jury pool in most counties. The fact that DA Barton went out of his way to ensure that the one Black person did not make it on to the jury is quite troubling.” 

“It’s also important here that it’s exceedingly rare for a court to find this misconduct, and the Court clearly was appalled that DA Barton accused the defense lawyer for being a racist,” said Kaplan. “The Court pointed out that the DA’s behavior was not just racist, but a further attack on the constitutional rights of the defendant, and a threat to the trust in our jury system and criminal legal system as a whole.” 

This is a look-in-the-mirror moment for Kevin Barton. Washington County residents deserve better from their elected prosecutor, and the Black juror deserves an apology.