Fantasy Decuir’s Fight for Freedom and the Racial Bias of LWOP in San Francisco

By Diana Block

Editor's note: Author Diana Block writes about community's effort to support Fantasy Decuir's fight for freedom and San Francisco's racial bias in it's use of Life Without Parole (LWOP), primarily effecting young black defendants. Despite losing the Racial Justice Act motion and with an increasingly punitive prosecutor, San Francisco's Participatory Defense Hub continue's to support Fantasy and her co-defendent, Lamonte, through the appeal process.

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On December 6, 2024, Fantasy Decuir was sentenced to Life Without Parole (LWOP) in a San Francisco courtroom. Fantasy’s defense attorneys, Mark Iverson and Darlene Comstedt, argued that the special circumstances conviction with a mandatory LWOP sentence violated the Racial Justice Act (RJA), as well as the California Constitution’s equal protection clause and constituted cruel or unusual punishment. Unfortunately, Judge Alexandra Gordon upheld the DA’s special circumstances charges and handed down an LWOP sentence to Fantasy and her co-defendant, Lamonte Mims. Directly after the sentencing, Fantasy’s lawyers submitted an appeal based on the RJA and the cruelty of the LWOP sentence.  Fantasy has since been transferred to Central California Facility for Women (CCWF) where incarcerated people who work with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) were able to immediately offer her support.

Fantasy was convicted for the July 2017 murder of Edward French, a prominent elder photographer and beloved LGBTQ community member.  This very unfortunate death was not planned or premeditated but occurred in connection with a robbery. However, the District Attorney elected to charge Fantasy Decuir and Lamonte Mims, who are Black and were both 19 at the time of the offense, with felony murder special circumstances. That charge mandates LWOP or the death sentence if a person is convicted. Prosecutors have discretion as to whether they apply special circumstances charges in such a case.

In 2022, their attorneys filed a motion on behalf of Decuir and Mims to dismiss the special circumstances charges of felony murder during the course of a robbery on the basis of PC 745, the California Racial Justice Act.  They argued that the two had been charged with a more serious offense than defendants of other races who were engaged in similar conduct and were similarly situated in San Francisco County. 

To substantiate their motion, the defense hired two experts who analyzed 141 murder charges that could qualify for special circumstance allegations in San Francisco between 2011 and 2021. These experts concluded that Black defendants, and defendants of color, were disproportionately charged with special circumstances.

Their analysis done in 2022 found that 75 percent of defendants charged with special circumstances in San Francisco are people of color. Although just 5.7 % of San Francisco residents were Black, Black defendants accounted for roughly 55 percent of the 58 cases that were charged with special circumstances between 2011 and 2020. 

In February 2023, Judge Gordon granted an evidentiary hearing for the defense’s RJA motion, stating that “Defendants have offered a statistical analysis of charging decisions by the San Francisco County District Attorney’s Office that, if true, appear significant.” However, ultimately Judge Gordon denied the RJA motion when the evidentiary hearing was held in June 2023.  She concluded that there were significant flaws in the selection and coding of the data used by the experts and therefore there wasn’t a racial bias exhibited by the prosecution in the charging of special circumstances in San Francisco county.

A subsequent 2023 trial for Decuir and Mims ended in a hung jury.  In Fantasy’s case, her attorneys argued that, at the time of the killing, Ms Decuir, who has sickle cell disease, was in a “sickle cell crisis” and suffering from opiate painkiller withdrawal.  The Jury found them guilty of robbery but deadlocked on the murder charges for both of them.  However, DA Brooke Jenkins immediately decided to retry the case and was able to win a guilty verdict in September 2024.

At the sentencing hearing, which was attended by family, community and teachers from Fantasy’s high school, the attorneys again pointed to the pronounced racial disparity in sentencing in San Francisco where a highly disproportionate number of Black defendants receive life without parole sentences. They also referenced states such as Michigan and Massachusetts that have eliminated life without parole for offenses committed by people under 21 years old due to evolving scientific understanding of youthful behavior. The San Francisco Participatory Defense Hub was able to provide a comment on the record regarding the racist and arbitrary nature of the special circumstances charge which meant that two young Black people were now condemned to death by incarceration. 

After the sentencing hearing, D.A. Jenkins boasted to the press that justice had finally been done. In a published letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, Diana Block from the SF HUB and CCWP challenged this assertion. “Justice needs to be informed by science and compassion or else it isn’t just at all.“

The San Francisco Participatory Defense Hub is following the appeal of this case closely.  Given the many injustices involved in the case, we are hopeful that the cruel and unusual sentence of LWOP will be overturned and that Fantasy Decuir and Lamonte Mims will have a chance to win their freedom in the future.