After revelations that Alameda County prosecutors systematically excluded Jewish and Black jurors from death penalty cases 20 to 40 years ago, District Attorney Pamela Price said Wednesday that notes from that period show a prosecutor — now a Superior Court judge — was looking for “dirt” on a colleague who was trying to blow the whistle.

Price, at the direction of a federal judge, announced in April that she was putting all 35 Alameda County death sentences on hold based on newly discovered evidence that prosecutors had secretly removed prospective jurors because of their religion or race, denying defendants a fair trial. At a news conference Wednesday, she disclosed notes from a case that she said indicates a prosecutor was trying to cover up the office’s clandestine policy.

Fred Freeman, sentenced to death in 1987 for a fatal shooting during a 1984 robbery in Berkeley, was seeking a new trial based on disclosures in 2003 by his prosecutor, Jack Quatman, that it had been standard practice in the office to exclude Jews and Black women from death penalty juries, including Freeman’s.

Quatman issued a declaration about the practice and later testified before a judge in Freeman’s case, but former colleagues challenged his statements, the judge found him not to be credible and the state Supreme Court upheld Freeman’s death sentence in 2005. He later died in prison.

At a news conference Wednesday, Price disclosed notes from an unidentified employee in 2004 saying that Morris...

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