The Brief

It was an ordinary day at Le Conte Junior High School in Hollywood. Spring of 1973. My friend Scott Pearce was fiddling with a quarter he’d taken from his pocket. He examined it more closely, and his typically friendly countenance turned maniacal. He ran over to me and, in the style of an overwrought anticommunist commentator, yelled, “Look at this! They’re everywhere! This American quarter has the initials ‘JS’ on it. Joseph Stalin!”

I took the coin from his hand and looked it over. As he said, the initials “JS” were embossed right next to the image of George Washington. It took me just a beat to call up the image of the towering neon sign on the rooftop of the evangelical Church of the Open Door in downtown Los Angeles. I responded in a similar John Birch Society-embracing tone, “That doesn’t stand for Joseph Stalin. It’s ‘Jesus Saves’!” The class erupted in laughter, as did Scott, who looked astonished at my comeback.

I’d moved from Inglewood to Hollywood in the middle of eighth grade, and fortunately made friends quickly. I also enjoyed terrific political conversations.

Larry Mantle photographed in 1970

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Courtesy Larry Mantle

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This was Hollywood in the 1970s, so it’s no surprise the prevailing conversations leaned heavily liberal. The same was true at home, where my parents' politics were left of center and heavily pro-civil rights.

My friend Scott was a first-rate public speaker who went on to a career in law. George Ledec was our house environmentalist, conversant on a range of state and federal laws. He later became an environmental economist for the World Bank. Rob Crowell loved to debate politics, described himself as a socialist in junior high and became a pastor. There were many other formidable early teenage intellectuals at LeConte — each rooted in a decidedly non-conservative perspective.

I remember thinking that there must be counterarguments to examine. At the local library I checked out Sen. Barry Goldwater’s The Conscience of a Conservative. Goldwater had been demolished in the 1964 presidential election by Lyndon Johnson. Even many conservatives were wary of his uncompromising stances. Though I was aware of the criticism, I thought his book was as good as any to expose myself to conservative ideology.

Barry Goldwater Jr., right, with Valley Times Publisher Ben Reddick, when his father declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination in 1964.

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Valley Times Photo Collection

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L.A. Public Library

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At home over family dinners, I started talking about Goldwater’s arguments. To my parents’ credit, they accepted my exploration, despite it running counter to their politics.

After trying out my material over dinner, I started introducing an occasional conservative argument at lunch with my friends. They seemed to enjoy our new verbal jousting, but couldn’t believe I thought the points I was raising had any merit. I extended my arguments to the classroom, to be met with the eye rolls of teachers. But it did subtly start shifting our frequent classroom political conversations.

When my friend George would go into detail about the need for government regulation of wetlands, I’d counter with how development helps build tax rolls to fund the programs liberals love.

Larry Mantle with Rosa Parks following an "AirTalk" interview

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Courtesy Larry Mantle

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Larry Mantle interviews Julia Child.

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Courtesy Larry Mantle

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I myself didn’t necessarily align with any one ideology — I just couldn’t get comfortable with hearing only one side of an issue.

For me, it was about hearing a wider range of ideas.

A few years later, I planned to enter the ministry and enrolled in a religious college in preparation. The political climate there was quite different from my Hollywood middle school. And I found myself again in the role of contrarian. I just couldn’t let conservative arguments go without challenge.

At the time, my U.S. government professor, Dennis McNutt, was a member of the Orange County Republican Central Committee. I loved debating him, though his political knowledge far surpassed mine.

I heard from him again about a year ago, when he emailed to tell me that he frequently listens to AirTalk and appreciates our coverage of politics and local issues. My high school government teacher, Judy Campbell, also listens regularly and attends our live AirTalk events. It’s a great feeling to have in our audience those who taught me so much.

The case against echo chambers

Larry Mantle and Rep. Darrell Issa (R) at the 2012 Republican National Convention.

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My discomfort with ideological echo chambers continues. There are certainly places to get strong progressive and conservative takes that straightforwardly confront opposition arguments. Unfortunately, others stack the deck in such a simplistic way that they’re little more than appeals to the fanbase. They may provide comfort in the company of the like-minded, but don’t help us work our way through legitimate competing arguments and differences in values.

This was on my mind even back in 1985 when I was working as the News Director of KPCC (now LAist) on the campus of Pasadena City College. Bob Miller, then our general manager, joined me on a walk to our cars in the staff parking lot. He started with complimenting my work, then said he wondered if there was something more personality-oriented that I might want to do on our air.

I was ready for the question. I’d long thought there was a great opportunity to talk about issues and news of the day with our well-informed and conscientious public radio listeners. I pitched Bob on a daily interview call-in program combining notable guests with listener calls.

KPCC got its start on the campus of Pasadena City College where "AirTalk" launched in 1985.

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Courtesy Pasadena City College

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He asked how quickly we could launch. I was stunned. I never expected he’d OK a significant show launch right on the spot. A month later, April 1, 1985, AirTalk launched as an evening drivetime program. With the launch of Southern California Public Radio in January 2000, which expanded the newsroom and ambition of the KPCC signal, we moved to mornings.

Over these 40 years, news media have dramatically changed. I grew up on The Big News on Channel 2, the nation’s first one-hour local TV newscast. It was a serious broadcast that dealt with local issues. There weren’t extended car chases or “happy talk” anchors. I read the Los Angeles Times daily and treated myself to buying the Herald-Examiner, with its grittier style, when I had a coin for the newsrack. I appreciated distinct journalistic voices, but I didn’t like anyone telling me there was only one moral or rational conclusion to come to.

That was at the front of my mind from the first time I went on the radio. I wanted to host a program that I would want to listen to. I could only hope that others would also be interested.

AirTalk’s approach of providing an array of voices and opinions was seldom challenged in the 20th century. In recent years, a new school of thought has arisen: the idea that it’s journalism’s job to fight back against pernicious arguments and misinformation. I don’t see it as a fight. Our job is to challenge arguments, not stack the deck against ones we think are weaker. There’s no question that effective journalism requires weighing of evidence, but the ultimate decision must be the audience’s.

Distrust of traditional media is rampant

Larry Mantle interviews Terry Gross, whose long-running NPR interview show "Fresh Air" features prominent people from all walks of life.

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Courtesy Larry Mantle

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The “Voice from Nowhere,” “both-sidesism” and “false equivalency” are just a few of the critical descriptions for traditional, non-advocacy, journalism. They describe an approach so focused on “balance” that demonstrably false arguments are given equal weight with provable ones. I think it’s a sometimes-legitimate criticism that’s also misused against solid journalism that refuses to demand the audience respond with moral indignation. There’s plenty to be indignant about, I don’t think you need someone else to tell you what should trigger that reaction.

The criticisms that “mainstream” media are generally liberal or that we’re part of and beholden to the corporate/governmental power structure have been around since long before I started in this field. What’s changed is that distrust of traditional media is rampant. We’re not just seen as biased, but intentionally deceiving the public. I don’t know how our profession rebuilds trust in this polarized era. I don’t think it happens by abandoning our efforts to reflect a wide range of perspectives to focus on advocacy.

The work of building trust never ends

One of the things I appreciate most about hosting AirTalk for all these years is building trust with listeners. Hopefully, they don’t perceive me as trying to influence their views. My goal, like LAist’s overall, is to reflect the terrific breadth of our region and to provide in-depth discussions of critical issues and fun personal reflections. Both are important in building community and getting to know each other. It makes coming to work every day incredibly rewarding.

I appreciate this opportunity and know how fortunate I am. It’s deeply gratifying to work within an organization with so many talented and dedicated people. It’s been a terrific four decades with, hopefully, several more years to come. Thank you for giving me the chance to fulfill the hopes I had for AirTalk in 1985.

Watch live

9 to 11 a.m. today: Join us this morning for a look back at the early days of AirTalk, some of the most memorable moments on air, and surprise special guests to commemorate the occasion. It will also all be live on LAist 89.3 of course! AirTalk wouldn’t have it any other way.

A year ago, the Trump administration launched a deportation campaign that would leave an indelible mark on L.A. County.

On the morning of June 6, masked federal immigration agents targeted a Home Depot in Westlake, where day laborers were gathered to solicit construction work. About 3 miles east, more masked agents descended on Ambiance Apparel, a fast-fashion warehouse in downtown Los Angeles.

At both locations, Angelenos witnessed workers getting handcuffed and hauled away. For some, those workers were friends, siblings, spouses or parents.

Purportedly meant to remove criminals from the country, federal immigration officials would go on to arrest more than 14,000 people in the greater Los Angeles area in 2025 — the majority of whom had no criminal record, according to an LAist analysis of recent data from the Deportation Data Project.

These detentions, and the ones that followed, ignited sweeping marches and community activism. Met with occasional violent resistance, the federal government deployed active-duty military personnel to the region.

So far, the mass deportation effort has left the following in its wake:

• In Ladera Heights, a food vendor clung to a tree to avoid being taken by federal agents. When they hauled her away, she was still wearing her work apron.
• In the San Fernando Valley, a high school senior took his dog for a walk and did not come home. A neighbor said she saw four men in tactical vests standing near unmarked SUVs shortly after the teenager was detained.
• In Monrovia, a 52-year-old day laborer who worked to support his wife and four daughters died after being struck by an SUV on the freeway. He was attempting to flee a raid at a local Home Depot. 

Families who were suddenly left without their breadwinners struggle to pay their rent. Asylum seekers are detained at routine check-ins. A record number of immigrants have died in civil detention. Many U.S. citizens of color now carry their passports to move about town. Federal agents have detained scores of citizens — sometimes for days. And, to date, more than 200,000 children have been separated from their parents. 

Trump’s mass deportation effort, first tested in Bakersfield, has been escalated to other cities: This includes Chicago, where federal agents killed Silverio Villegas-González, a 38-year-old single father, and almost killed Marimar Martinez, a Montessori school teaching assistant. Then, in Minneapolis, federal agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The federal government branded Martinez, Good and Pretti — all U.S. citizens — as “domestic terrorists” and accused them of trying to harm officers.

Eeking out a living in the raids’ aftermath

In downtown L.A.’s once-bustling fashion district, business hasn't bounced back. LAist spoke with multiple workers in the area. They declined to share their names for fear of reprisal.

Since the raid at Ambiance, “it hasn’t been the same,” said a worker at a nearby shop. She works at a party supply store specializing in piñatas and embroidered graduation stoles. She’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop, she said.

“[One feels] insecure because you never know how the day is going to go,” the worker told LAist.

At Ambiance Apparel, around the block, an employee estimated a massive loss of income for the store, as much as 50%. (The store did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

That same effect has played out at small businesses all over the county. Neighborhoods that were hit hard by immigration raids — including Boyle Heights, Echo Park and Westlake, along with southeast L.A. cities like Bell, Pico Rivera and South Gate — report less customer traffic and reduced daily sales.

Angelenos, including workers' family members, gather in front of Ambiance Apparel after several employees were taken into custody by federal agents last summer.

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Genaro Molina

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Since last June, the Home Depot in Westlake has been targeted for raids at least four times. Even so, day laborers still mill about the home improvement megastore’s parking lot, soliciting construction work from homeowners and contractors.

One worker, a 39-year-old from Guatemala who declined to give his name, said he witnessed the raid last year but managed to get away. He was frightened, he told LAist, but he still came back to work the next day; he has five children to support, including one studying to become a nurse.

“Ni modo, hay que comer,” he said, noting that people need money to eat. “Siempre hay necesidad.”

The reality, he said, is that he’s defenseless if agents were to show up again. Despite his own situation, he feels for the other workers around him.

“Es muy triste,” he said. “Están luchando por sus hijos, para seguir adelante” — “It’s really sad. They’re fighting for their children, to get ahead.”

Finding strength in community  

Beyond the marches last summer, Angelenos continue to find ways to support local immigrant communities. Some have offered to buy groceries for those who struggle to make ends meet or are simply scared to leave their homes. Others have volunteered to give their neighbors rides to school or work. Several regions have organized community patrols to warn about the presence of federal agents.

Activism has not eluded younger generations. At high schools and middle schools across the county, students have walked out of class in protest.

At Olive Vista Middle School in Sylmar, about 100 students left their science, English and math classes earlier this year. To critics who thought they should have stayed inside, 11-year-old Alejandro said: “They don't understand how much we love our parents.”

Across the U.S., detained immigrants themselves are engaging in activism. From Delaney Hall in New Jersey to Adelanto in California, people inside ICE detention centers have launched hunger strikes to expose conditions they describe as unsafe and inhumane. The Department of Homeland Security insists there are no hunger strikes at these facilities, and that detainees get “three meals a day, medical care, and receive full due process.”

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights has also planned a slew of L.A. events during the months of June and July to draw attention to the raids’ impact on local families — and to the unique challenges faced by certain workers, including car washers and custodians.

“A year after the cruel immigration surge that shook all Angelenos, our message is clear: Fear did not defeat us, cruelty did not divide us, and militarization did not silence us,” said executive director Angelica Salas in an email. “We remember, we resist, and we recommit ourselves to the struggle for justice, dignity and the humanity of every Angeleno.”

The race is on for second place in the Los Angeles mayor's contest.

Early trends show L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman making slight gains on reality TV personality Spencer Pratt in the race to face incumbent Karen Bass in November.

The Associated Press has already declared Bass as having secured one spot in the runoff.

Votes are still being counted, and the L.A. County Registrar of Voters will receive ballots postmarked by Election Day up until seven days later. Hundreds of thousands of votes remain to be counted, according to the registrar.

By Tuesday night, Pratt had collected enough votes to put him squarely in the second spot, with a substantial lead over Raman.

But by late Wednesday, Raman had gone from just over 20% of the vote on election night to a little over 22% in the latest tally. Pratt gained about a tenth of a percentage point to about 30%.

“I think she has a shot at catching Pratt but I think it's a long shot,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “It requires her to get a large percentage of the votes that remain to be counted.”

Yaroslavsky noted progressives tended to vote late and those votes have yet to be counted. Raman is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and can be expected to pick up a lot of those votes.

“The later votes tend to be more Democratic and more progressive and that inures to her benefit,” Yaroslavsky said.

The problem for Raman is that two days ago she was about 40,000 votes behind Pratt and last night was about 38,000 votes behind Pratt, he said.

Raman needs to gain much more than 2,000 votes a day to eclipse the 38,000 vote deficit, according to Yaroslavsky.

“She really has to get the preponderance of the votes that will be coming in in the next week or so,” he said.

Paul Mitchell, a Democratic strategist whose company tracks ballot return data, said Republicans were reflected heavily in the early returns but as the votes continue more Democrats will be represented.

However, it may not be enough to give Raman the boost she needs. He noted that Pratt is losing votes in every vote update, but not all of those votes are going to Raman. They’re split between her and Bass.

“While [Pratt] will drop every release, I'm not sure that Raman will increase fast enough to meet and surpass him,” Mitchell said.

He explained a theory that many Bass and Raman voters held onto their ballots ahead of Election Day and that many of them were likely "establishment voters," meaning they leaned toward the incumbent.

“ So I think that in the end, we might find that [Pratt] hangs on, and the reason why he hung on is because the people who were voting at the end, the Democrats, were voting more for Karen Bass,” Mitchell said.

The Registrar of Voters is expected to release an update on the vote count Thursday evening.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pursuing federal government access to most Americans’ medical records, in a quest to research a link between vaccines and autism — a connection the medical establishment studied for decades and flatly rejects.

The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking data from little-known state systems that allow hospitals and clinics to exchange detailed, identifiable patient information, KFF Health News has learned.

In private meetings, some public health leaders have objected to giving Kennedy’s team access to such data, raising doubts that it’s legal or that the information would even be useful.

They have also expressed concerns about allowing the federal government to peer into the minutiae of Americans’ medical records, which could mean viewing anything from doctors’ notes to prescription history. HHS has offered no insight into how it will protect or handle the personal health information it obtains.

But Kennedy told KFF Health News that medical records are key to investigating the cause of autism, vaccine safety, and chronic diseases. And millions of dollars in grant money has poured into a Nebraska nonprofit that has assisted Kennedy’s effort, according to state records.

He and his advisers have been frustrated that federal access to Americans’ medical records has been limited.

“We need a good health record system, and one of the things that really surprised me most when I came into office is that there is — that the systems are broken,” Kennedy said in a May interview. “We’ve had to go to the states and, luckily, we’ve got a lot of cooperation from the states, but we now have databases together that we can actually do the studies on. Those studies are in motion.”

HHS has not publicly announced any new projects involving medical records and autism or vaccine research. Kennedy faced blowback last year when he proposed compiling the medical records of people with autism to create a federal disease registry — which health department officials later disputed was underway.

But Kennedy said in May, “We have a whole pipeline of studies that will be done over the next year.”

Though the White House has steered Kennedy away from further changes to U.S. vaccine policy ahead of November’s crucial midterm elections, President Donald Trump has regularly echoed Kennedy’s doubts about vaccine safety and last week signed an executive order calling for the U.S. to reduce the number of vaccines recommended for children.

Kennedy’s political appointees and allies — including William “Reyn” Archer III, a former Texas health official and vaccine critic whom Kennedy hired as a senior adviser — have led the initiative for the health department to collect and examine medical records.

Federal officials met with leaders of the state-run health information exchange systems several times over the past year and asked how the personal medical records they maintain could be used for vaccine research, according to seven people who participated in the discussions or were familiar with them.

Craig Behm, who runs the Maryland health information exchange, said Kennedy’s team asked about how the vast trove of medical records they store from hospitals and health systems could be used to study vaccines.

“If this administration wants to conduct research on the effectiveness of vaccines, are you saying you all can help us conduct that research?” Behm recalled being asked by a top official at HHS’ health information technology office.

Last June, Behm and leaders of other state exchanges met with Kennedy’s top advisers to discuss sharing more medical data with federal agencies. The state organizations followed up with a pitch in October for a new surveillance system that would give the federal health department “real-time, 24-hour data feeds on opioid and chronic disease trends” within a year, according to a presentation reviewed by KFF Health News. Under the proposal, HHS would get data from 90% of the population’s medical records by 2028.

Administration officials regularly asked during the meetings how the records could be used to monitor vaccine safety. Kennedy has rejected the federal government’s current vaccine-monitoring systems; decades of research has shown immunizations are safe and effective for most people.

“Vaccine safety, or whatever words you want to use, has come up pretty consistently in those conversations,” said John Kansky, CEO of the Indiana Health Information Exchange.

Kansky sees the potential value of sharing information from the exchanges for public health but is worried about the focus on vaccines: “It’s like, oh man, I wish you would have picked something that pushed fewer buttons for people.”

A system to monitor chronic disease

Nearly every state has at least one health information exchange — often regulated by state laws and run by private companies or nonprofits — that enables hospitals and health systems to immediately share patients’ medical records with one another. The systems allow doctors and nurses to quickly pull up nearly anyone’s medical history and records at emergency rooms or share after-visit summaries and notes with patients’ primary care providers, for example.

In certain circumstances — most often dealing with cases of infectious diseases such as measles or flu — the exchanges notify public health authorities, like the state health department or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Using the exchanges for broader public health purposes is not an unusual idea in itself. But it can present privacy, legal, and ethical complications, health officials say.

In the end, Behm said his organization in Maryland declined to share more data with the federal government for vaccine research, noting that sharing medical records for that purpose would require a rash of approvals from hospitals, state political leaders, and research boards. Any new data-sharing agreement should also have a clear, detailed framework outlining what would be shared and with whom, he added.

“A number of us said, ‘We can’t do anything our agreements don’t allow us to do, so no,’” Behm said. Indeed, most health information exchanges have contractual restrictions on who can access clinical data.

Kansky said Indiana is still weighing whether to provide additional data for Kennedy’s project, and that nothing has yet been shared.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard did not answer questions about how many states are participating in Kennedy’s project, what new data the agency is collecting, how much the federal government is spending on the initiative, how it is protecting patient privacy, or who has access to the data.

“HHS is strengthening public health surveillance and modernizing data systems to better understand and combat the childhood chronic disease epidemic as part of Secretary Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again agenda,” Hilliard said in an emailed statement. “Americans deserve robust systems to monitor the drivers of chronic illness.”

Kennedy has asserted, without evidence, that vaccines can cause chronic illness.

A Kennedy partner in Nebraska

At least one state has been cooperative.

The former leader of Nebraska’s state health information exchange has led the effort to share data from medical records with the federal government.

Jaime Bland, former CEO of CyncHealth — the Nebraska health information exchange used by most hospitals and health systems in the state — said several states are looking to “open up channels” to provide more analysis to Kennedy’s team.

“They’re looking at the data differently and providing some insights back to the CDC,” Bland told KFF Health News.

Bland was among a group who proposed that CyncHealth would help kick off the initiative, according to a 43-slide PowerPoint presented to federal officials during an October meeting.

CyncHealth and other state health information exchanges would “ingest data from hospitals, clinics, laboratories, pharmacies, payers, and social services agencies,” then “link claims and clinical records through a master patient index.”

Data from the exchanges “will be deidentified where appropriate,” according to one slide.

The federal government would pay the exchanges for furnishing the records, according to the proposal: $3 a person, annually.

Officials would “frame publicly that this is not a new database, but a federated trust model that delivers real-time data for all HHS missions,” the presentation reads.

After the meeting, Nebraska’s health department was awarded a large grant from the CDC, and CyncHealth in turn got millions of dollars from the state.

On Dec. 19, the CDC announced new funding under its Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity program, which sends money to state and local health departments for lab work, health information enhancements, and solutions for outbreaks.

Nebraska’s state health department was awarded $18.7 million — the most of any state last year, though Nebraska is the 38th most populous state. By comparison, Texas received $9.2 million, and California got $10.8 million.

CyncHealth was then awarded three contracts totaling $13.6 million from the state health department just weeks later, on Jan. 9 and Jan. 16, according to a publicly accessible database of state contracts.

Grace McNamara, a spokesperson for CyncHealth, said it retained $2.4 million of the funding for Kennedy’s project; the remaining money was distributed to “other participating states and various vendor organizations for implementation support.”

A former CDC official who was aware of the transaction, but not authorized to speak publicly about it, confirmed the money was intended for CyncHealth to supply data for Kennedy’s initiative to look at vaccines and autism. McNamara said that the “work is focused on improving outcomes related to acute and chronic illnesses.”

“The referenced project is not research, but rather a proof-of-concept project on how health information exchange and public health can work together to improve health outcomes and is not specific to autism,” she said in an emailed statement.

McNamara did not answer questions about what type of medical data is being provided to the federal health department or whether patients’ identifying information is removed.

Bland left her post at CyncHealth — where she was paid nearly $420,000 a year — in December. She was named in April as the chief data strategist for the MAHA Institute — a think tank founded by allies of Kennedy and Trump to advance their Make America Healthy Again movement.

Bland agreed with Kennedy that data from state health information exchanges could provide more insight into autism’s causes or vaccine injuries.

"The data is so fragmented, so modeled when it comes to population health and public health, that we lose sight of the individual stories,” Bland said. She told a story she had heard about a woman who had a seizure after receiving the HPV vaccine.

“You know, the vaccine is safe — it absolutely is — but it wasn’t safe for her,” Bland said. “As public health officials, we say the vaccine is safe. But there are cases where it is not.”

Daniel Jernigan, a former top CDC official who left the agency last summer, said he tried to point Kennedy to data that would help the health secretary study vaccine safety and autism.

After 31 years at the CDC overseeing public health surveillance, emerging infectious diseases, and the influenza divisions, Jernigan thought the solution was simple. The secretary could work with researchers to obtain huge databases pulled from health systems nationwide and maintained by major electronic health records companies.

Those databases are deidentified, meaning they don’t include patient names or other information that can identify individuals. Jernigan said Kennedy didn’t seem interested.

Instead, as The New York Times first reported, the health secretary dispatched two top advisers — Archer and Hannah Anderson, his former deputy chief of staff — to the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta last July to download millions of identifiable patient records directly from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, the system the health agency uses to investigate complications from vaccines. The records, though, were decades old.

Jernigan said the federal government has limited legal authority to access medical records from state health information exchanges. In any case, examining those records may provide a view of a person’s medical history that will not necessarily produce answers to Kennedy’s questions about vaccines and autism.

“If they’re just using the electronic health record data, there are limits to that,” Jernigan said. “If they’re only looking at electronic health record data, all you’re going to get is what was captured in the encounter. It’s not going to be very satisfying.”

KFF Health News data reporter Maia Rosenfeld contributed to this article.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The California Supreme Court this week reversed the death sentence of a Los Angeles Bloods gang member convicted of killing a rival Crip in the early 1990s because a prosecutor compared him to a dangerous animal, the first time a death sentence has been overturned under the 2020 Racial Justice Act.

Anthony Bankston represented himself in court in 1991. A jury found him guilty. During the penalty phase of the trial, a prosecutor compared Bankston — appearing in a suit and tie — to a Bengal tiger at the zoo.

The prosecutor’s story was that a journalist observed a Bengal tiger in a zoo, and was told by a hunter “that’s not a Bengal tiger.” Instead, the journalist traveled to India, where he found a tiger, “all flexed out, he sees the claws out, he sees the fangs, . . . he hears the growl.”

The hunter tells him, “now you see a Bengal tiger.” The story was supposed to illustrate that Bankston in court was not the same person as Bankston on the street, whom the prosecutor described as “a killing machine.”

The California Supreme Court justices found that comparison prejudicial in a unanimous ruling with two concurrences. They reversed Bankston’s death sentence but the murder conviction still stands, meaning the high court sent Bankston’s sentencing back down to a trial court.

It was one of four decisions the high court released this week that stemmed from claims under the Racial Justice Act, which allows prisoners to appeal their convictions if they believe racial bias tainted their trials.

The court upheld death sentences for two of the men: Alex Demolle, who was convicted of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl; and Marcos Esquivel Barrera, who was sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering two of his children.

In the fourth case, the court modified rulings against two condemned prisoners of Southeast Asian descent, but not because of their Racial Justice Act claims.

A spokesperson for the Judicial Council of California confirmed that Bankston’s case was the first reversal of a death sentence by the California Supreme Court because of violations of the Racial Justice Act.

According to the ruling in Bankston’s appeal, the Bengal tiger parable has come up several times in different cases, so much so that the high court called it a “well worn tale.”

In a 2010 case, the high court found that the Bengal tiger metaphor was not a prejudicial statement about a defendant’s Vietnamese heritage. In a 2018 case, a defendant said the Bengal tiger story was used to “dehumanize” him, an argument the California Supreme Court justices rejected.

But in 2020, the Legislature passed the Racial Justice Act, which included a prohibition on certain animal images that pose a risk of appealing to racial bias. The law itself specifically mentions the Bengal tiger example.

“In light of the passage of the RJA, we now make clear that, whatever the intent behind telling the story may be, the Bengal tiger story should no longer be told in California courtrooms,” Justice Leondra Kruger wrote for the majority. “There is no reason to permit prosecutors to continue running the risk of appealing to biases that undermine the very foundation of a system of equal justice, simply to make an unremarkable point about a defendant’s behavior outside a controlled courtroom setting.”

Comparisons of defendants to animals do not automatically qualify as violations of the Racial Justice Act. A case in the 4th District Court of Appeals this year found that comparing a defendant to a dog left in a car with a Slurpee was a fair comparison point to the notion of circumstantial evidence.

The Bankston ruling similarly noted that references like “eager beaver,” “happy as a clam,” “free as a bird,” or “quiet as a mouse” would not rise to the level of Racial Justice Act violations.

Bankston, who is Black, was convicted of two first-degree murder charges and one count of attempted murder for separate shootings in 1991. He was convicted of shooting and killing Benson Jones and attempting to murder Benson’s brother, Benjamin.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.