SAN JOSE — An appellate court has issued an order signaling that it intends to side with former San Francisco 49ers star Dana Stubblefield as he pursues a bail hearing — and his release from state prison — following the same court’s reversal of his 2020 rape conviction late last year.

Former San Francisco 49er Dana Stubblefield sits at a press conference with his attorneys in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, May 3, 2016. Stubblefield’s 2020 rape conviction was overturned late last year by an appellate court and he is currently fighting to have a bail hearing to facilitate his release from prison. (Dan Honda/Bay Area News Group file photo) 

In the brief order published Friday, the Sixth District Court of Appeal stated that “good cause appearing, the parties are notified that this court is considering issuing a peremptory writ,” and set a Tuesday filing deadline for objections.

The order was issued in response to a petition from Stubblefield’s legal team asking the appellate court to compel the Santa Clara County Superior Court to hold a hearing that would allow them to argue for bail and their client’s release.

Stubblefield is currently being held in Corcoran State Prison. His conviction was overturned in late December, and his attorneys sought a bail hearing at the beginning of the year, but Santa Clara County Judge Hector Ramon pushed the matter to Jan. 17 so that he could evaluate whether he had jurisdiction to hold such a hearing.

Ramon ultimately decided that the case was still in the jurisdiction of the Sixth District court, and would remain that way until it issued a remittitur — a technical ruling that returns jurisdiction to the lower court — which cannot be done until Feb. 25 at the earliest. And that date could be pushed back by weeks or months if the state Attorney General’s office chooses to challenge the conviction reversal.

That’s why Stubblefield’s attorneys are pushing for a bail hearing as soon as possible, as they highlight how he has been incarcerated for more than a month despite now having no legal conviction on record.

The appellate order is “plain as day. The trial court has jurisdiction to hear matters of bail before the remittitur,” said Kenneth Rosenfeld, Stubblefield’s lead trial attorney. “Not only can they hear it, but they must hear it. It’s stunning we had to do this writ.”

A three-judge appellate panel ruled Dec. 26 that Stubblefield’s conviction was “legally invalid” after finding that the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office violated the Racial Justice Act when a prosecutor suggested to jurors in closing arguments that police opted not to search Stubblefield’s home for a gun because he was a famous Black man.

The appellate ruling concluded that because of this decision, race expressly affected the availability of evidence for the jury to consider in determining Stubblefield’s guilt. He had been charged with using a gun to threaten and then rape a woman who had come to his Morgan Hill home to interview for a babysitting job in 2015.

Stubblefield — who played for the 49ers from 1993 to 2001 — and his defense team have long contended that he engaged in a paid sexual encounter with his accuser, identified in the appellate ruling as Jane Doe, and that he initially lied to cover up the tryst but never assaulted her.

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The Racial Justice Act of 2020, authored by state Assemblymember Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, went into effect in 2021 and makes it illegal to obtain a conviction “on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin.” The law allows legal challenges to charges, convictions and sentences found to have been influenced by systemic bias. The appellate ruling for Stubblefield marked the first major case reversal in Santa Clara County under the law.

In the defense team’s bail hearing petition, appellate attorney Joe Doyle cited the 1994 Palma v. Industrial Fasteners decision that found a writ — a legal term for a court order — is warranted “when petitioner’s entitlement to relief is so obvious” and “when such entitlement is conceded or when there has been clear error under well-settled principles of law and undisputed facts — or when there is an unusual urgency requiring acceleration of the normal process.”

The Sixth District court referenced the Palma precedent in its latest order. Barring an objection being filed by Tuesday, the court would be expected to direct the lower court to hold a bail hearing for Stubblefield, which his defense team intends to schedule as soon as possible.

“A legally innocent man sits in Corcoran prison,” Rosenfeld said. “How can anyone be okay with that?”