Ali

In 2001, a California state court jury convicted Petitioner-Appellant Mohammed Ali of the first-degree murder of his girlfriend, Tracey Biletnikoff. During jury selection, the prosecutor, Stephen Wagstaffe, peremptorily struck the only two African-American members of the jury pool. Ali maintains that these strikes were racially-motivated and therefore violated his rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 , 106 S.Ct. 1712 , 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). We hold that a comparative juror analysis, in combination with other facts in the record, demonstrates that the prosecutor’s purported race-neutral reasons for striking at least one of the jurors were pretexts for racial discrimination. We further hold that the California Court of Appeal’s contrary conclusion was not only incorrect, but unreasonably so. Accordingly, we reverse the district court’s denial of Ali’s petition for writ of habeas corpus and grant the writ.

1. Background

A. Jury Selection

On November 8, 1999, the State of California charged Mohammed Ali with the first-degree murder of his girlfriend, Tracey Biletnikoff. Ali entered a plea of not guilty, and stood…