“It’s so unfortunate how everything took place. It was a regular day,” Britny Calloway said.
On May 14, 2022, she and her now-husband, James Calloway, dropped her older children off at a birthday party. They took their 10-month-old baby to the car wash. James held him in his arms and they watched the spectacle of suds and whirling cloth through the big window.
Then, the three of them headed to El Toyon Park in National City for a family barbecue.
James Calloway describes himself as an ex-gang member. Before that day, his last conviction had been in 2019.
In the years since, he said he turned his life around. He started a trucking company.
“My day to day life was going to work, driving trucks, coming home and being a dad,” he said.
According to court documents, 28-year-old Caleb Stacy was another member of Calloway’s former gang.
While the Calloways were at the park, Stacy left work and rode his motorcycle there.
Stacy called James Calloway over and pulled two guns on him. He’d heard rumors that Britny was a “snitch.”
Calloway said Stacy threatened to kill him, Britny and their baby.
Others managed to talk Stacy down. He drove his motorcycle away and stopped nearby.
“What was I supposed to do besides what I did?” Calloway said.
Calloway ran to his car, drove up to Stacy, and shot him dead.
“Men have an obligation that they do not ask for, and that is protecting your family," he said. "And that is taught and instilled upon us as kids.”
Britny Calloway said the eventual charges surprised them.
If he had walked up to Stacy and shot him, he might eventually have the chance at parole.
But because he fired from a vehicle, he was sentenced to die in prison.
“When we heard that it was first degree, it was just like, it was a shock, because how? Like how and why? This is at most self-defense or involuntary,” she said.
The first-degree murder charge isn’t the reason Calloway is facing life without parole. If he had walked up to Stacy and shot him, he might eventually have the chance at parole. But because he fired from a vehicle, he was sentenced to die in prison.
How most murder cases became ‘the worst of the worst’
Firing from a vehicle is one of the “special circumstances” in California murder law that can qualify a person for a sentence of life without parole.
The list is a patchwork of dozens of specific situations: If the murder was committed for money, if the victim was a firefighter, if the defendant used poison, or wrecked a train.
The list was created in 1977 as a way to limit who could receive the death penalty and life without parole to the perceived worst of the worst, after the Supreme Court said those sentences were being given too randomly.
But ballot measures kept expanding the list by popular demand.
Voter guides cited famous murderers of the day — the “Zodiac Killer,” the “Hillside Strangler” — to persuade the public to create more special circumstances.
A 1978 voter guide said: “If Charles Manson were to order his family of drug-crazed killers to slaughter your family, Manson would not receive the death penalty.”
That proposition passed, more than doubling the list of special circumstances. The list grew so long that most murders became eligible for special circumstances in California.
One analysis of almost 2,000 cases between 1978 and 2002 found that 95% of first-degree murders and 59% of second-degree murders and voluntary manslaughters were eligible for special circumstances.
Most murder cases were now considered the worst of the worst. Calloway’s special circumstance — shooting from a vehicle — was added in 1996 to combat drive-by gang shootings.
All this history is now bearing down on Calloway.
“It's been extremely hard, just thinking about not being able to hold my son yet, not being able to be a father. 'C'mon, man!'" he said. "Then you gotta think I have to be strong for them, too. They can’t see me in here breaking down.”
Britny is now raising five children on her own. She started working overnight shifts at a hospital.
She’s almost 9 months pregnant now. She said it’s her second surrogacy pregnancy to make ends meet since James was incarcerated.
Their baby is now four years old. She shows him pictures of his father. Tells him, “That’s your dad.” Repeats it over and over like a flashcard, hoping it will stick.
“He hasn't held our son in years," she said. "I haven't touched him or hugged him or anything in years. My kids, same thing.”
It’s entirely up to the District Attorney whether to charge special circumstances in a case. Britny Calloway believes everything would be different if her husband weren’t Black.
“If he was a white man, this wouldn’t happen,” she said.
James Calloway agrees. He filed a motion requesting resentencing based on racial bias in his case. His hearing is in April.
San Diego’s Office of the Public Defender hired a statistician to analyze years of murder cases from the District Attorney’s Office. Even though most murders are eligible for special circumstances, the analysis found that Black defendants are charged with a special circumstance at a rate nearly three times higher than white defendants.
The data show something more.
Not only is there a large racial gap in who receives charges that can lead to life without parole. After Summer Stephan became the district attorney in 2017, it grew significantly wider.
A ‘windfall’ of data
For people convicted of murder, special circumstance charges can mean the difference between the eventual chance at parole and dying in prison.
It wasn’t something Daniel Trautfield used to worry about.
“I thought that our system would only, you know, give them life without parole if the things that they had done were truly egregious,” he said.
Trautfield is now the director of the University of California, Los Angeles Special Circumstances Conviction Project.
About 5,000 people are serving life without parole in California, a number that far exceeds nearby states, he said.
When Trautfield started meeting them, they weren’t who he expected. They were often people using wheelchairs and walkers who had lived in the prison for decades. People he considered fully rehabilitated, and who were leading rehabilitative work in California prisons.
To him, they were the most deserving of their freedom, but least eligible to receive it. The U.S. is one of the only Western countries to sentence people to life without parole, he said.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, it doesn’t deter crime. Pulling together data to see patterns in these sentences is challenging, Trautfield said.
“Many county D.A.'s offices haven't been, and in some ways are still not, particularly diligent in keeping records of the convictions and charges and sentences that they have administered in their office,” he said.
What records they do keep are hard to access, Traufield said.
“They are essentially in control of what data is released,” he said, which creates a problem for people in his line of work. “We have to rely on data provided by the DA to then address the DA's history of racialized sentencing and charging.”
Recently, his team received what he called a “windfall” of data from the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office — a spreadsheet of all cases with at least one first-degree murder charge since 1996.
“We went with a completely neutral eye towards these issues, and found ultimately that the concerns that community members raised really bore out in the data,” he said.
“That's a huge increase. And that increase doesn't really, can't really be explained by other types of changes in the county.”— Daniel Trautfield, director of the University of California, Los Angeles Special Circumstances Conviction Project.
He said under former San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, Black people were about five times more likely than white people to face life without parole through the special circumstance of felony murder. Under the current district attorney, Summer Stephan, he said that rose to about 23 times more likely.
“That's a huge increase," Trautfield said. "And that increase doesn't really, can't really be explained by other types of changes in the county.”
University of California, San Diego researcher Alison Boehmer analyzed the data for Trautfield’s team.
She found that Stephan and her predecessor, Dumanis, both charged special circumstances in about 20% of first-degree murder cases. But the rate of special circumstance charges rose for Black murder defendants under Stephan, while the rate of special circumstance charges for white murder defendants fell.
To control for possible differences between cases, Boehmer also took a narrower look at the data for cases with two or more murder charges. Those are all eligible for a special circumstance charge for cases with multiple murders.
After Stephan took office, the rate of that charge against eligible people fell for every group except for Black people. For Black people, it rose by more than 17%.
The Office of the Public Defender has accused the District Attorney of having no standard criteria for when they charge specials, leaving the door wide open for bias.
The District Attorney’s Office declined an interview, but told KPBS by email that it charges special circumstances whenever there’s enough evidence, regardless of race. The office claims the disparity doesn’t reflect intentional choices by its office, but fluctuations in crime that are outside of its control.
The D.A.'s office also questioned the significance of percentage statistics, saying that one or two cases could make a big difference in percentages, creating a gap that sounds more significant than it actually is.
Boehmer refuted this. She said even when comparing people whose cases had exactly the same charges, Black murder defendants received special circumstance charges at significantly higher rates.
Controlling for things like case characteristics and per capita arrest rates, Boehmer said Black people during Stephan’s tenure are still about 9% more likely than white people to receive special circumstance charges.
The San Diego District Attorney’s Office charges fewer people with special circumstances overall compared to other California counties. But Trautfield said that means prosecutors have more discretion in who to charge.
“The laws are so broad that essentially, you know, a vast, vast number of people are eligible for these specials, and it's at the complete discretion of the D.A. to bring those specials forward,” he said.
He said the racial disparities in who faces life without parole are far more extreme in San Diego County than in nearby counties like Los Angeles.
Closing the gap
The Racial Justice Act was enacted in 2020 to help reduce disparities in sentencing.
Defendants like James Calloway can use it to petition for resentencing if they suspect racial bias played a factor in the outcome of their case.
But those petitions rarely succeed.
The Stanford Law Group and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund released an analysis in November that found “no California judge has granted a petition under the Racial Justice Act for disparate sentencing.”
“The problem is that oftentimes the district attorneys are opposing this work as fervently as they can and really don't want to see these sentences change,” Trautfield said.
Some counties have committees of district attorneys who decide whether to charge special circumstances, rather than individuals, Trautfield said, but it’s unclear whether that has any effect on disparities.
Trautfield believes the most effective tool to reduce these disparities is voting.
“It's really important for people in San Diego to consider what D.A. best reflects the values of their community and really pay attention to how different DAs will enact their discretion,” he said.
Stephan’s current term ends in January 2029. San Diego will hold its next District Attorney election in 2028.
