SAN JOSE, Calif. – A former prosecutor testified yesterday that, at the suggestion of a judge, he struck several potential jurors in a death penalty case because they seemed to be Jewish.

During a hearing ordered by the California Supreme Court, the ex-prosecutor, John Quatman, said an Oakland based judge, Stanley Golde, called him into chambers after court one day in 1987 during the jury selection phase of a murder trial. Golde had failed to use all the opportunities the judge had offered to remove jurors without stating a reason.

“He said, ‘What are you doing?'” Mr. Quatman testified. “He says, ‘You didn’t challenge the Jew.’ He said no Jewish person could sit on a death penalty jury and return a verdict [of guilty].'”

Mr. Quatman said Golde buttressed his observation with a brief history lesson. “He told me about Adolf Eichmann…and the problems in Israel when they caught him,” the former prosecutor said. Mr. Quatman said he returned to court the next day and struck three potential jurors he thought were Jewish. They were identified as Barbara Mishell, George Peisker, and Harold Laput. “Golde told me to challenge the Jewish people, and I did,” the ex-prosecutor said.

Golde, who was Jewish and personally opposed to the death penalty, died in 1998.

Mr. Quatman was called as a witness by lawyers for Fred Freeman, who was convicted in the 1987 trial of a killing at a Berkeley, Calif., bar. Freeman’s attorneys are seeking to have the conviction overturned on the grounds that the jury pool was tainted by bias.

A lawyer with the California attorney general’s office, George Williamson, questioned Mr. Quatman about how he knew the potential jurors, such as Ms. Mishell, were Jews based solely on their names.

“Did she have something tattooed on her to make you know she was Jewish?” Mr. Williamson asked. Mr. Quatman said he struck Ms. Mishell because he thought her surname was Jewish.

“Where’d you get that?” Mr. Williamson asked.

“I developed it over the course of my life,” Mr. Quatman replied. He conceded, however, that he would have stricken the woman from the jury pool in any event. “I wouldn’t have kept Ms. Mishell, whether she was Jewish or not.”

Mr. Quatman testified that he used a 10-point scale to rate the jurors on how receptive they were likely to be to the government’s case seeking the death penalty. He gave a 10 to those who were virtually certain to support a death verdict and a zero to those who would never vote for death.

Mr. Quatman said his assessment of the Jewish jurors changed dramatically after Golde brought up the religion issue. “I graded Mr. Peisker down from a four to a zero, after talking to Judge Golde,” the ex-prosecutor said.

Defense attorneys have argued that the practice of striking Jews from jury panels went beyond Freeman’s case and was a general policy in the Alameda County district attorney’s office for about two decades.

However, the judge who oversaw yesterday’s hearing, Kevin Murphy, said at the outset of the session that he would not hear any evidence about the policy the prosecutor’s office allegedly maintained against Jewish jurors. The judge said he would only consider evidence that bore directly on how Freeman’s case was handled.

Judge Murphy said the case turned on whether the former prosecutor’s story was credible. “The issue is whether Mr. Quatman can be believed,” Judge Murphy said.

During his questioning, Mr. Williamson repeatedly suggested that Mr. Quatman was making the allegations because he bears a grudge against the top officials in the prosecutor’s office where he once worked. Mr. Williamson accused the ex-prosecutor of harboring “a very, very deeply held bitterness” against the office because he was disciplined for making a vulgar and disparaging remark to another lawyer.

Mr. Quatman acknowledged that he was “not happy” about how he was treated toward the end of his 25-year career as an Alameda prosecutor. In 1993, he was transferred to the consumer protection division as a result of the verbal altercation with his colleague. In 1998, he retired and moved to Montana.

During an aggressive cross-examination, Mr. Williamson painted Mr. Quatman as unscrupulous, dishonest, and unethical.

“You knew it was against the law to kick Jewish people off a criminal case because of their religion?” Mr. Williamson asked.

“It’s a fair statement,” Mr. Quatman answered.

Mr. Williamson even suggested that Mr. Quatman lied in a campaign flyer several years ago when he ran unsuccessfully to become a county judge.

Golde’s son, Matthew, attended yesterday’s hearing. Asked if he believed his father would ever have said what Mr. Quatman claims, the son said, “Not in that context.”

Matthew Golde said he believes Mr. Quatman is “embittered” and is pursuing a vendetta against his former colleagues. However, Mr. Golde, who is an attorney in Oakland, said Jews probably do get excluded from jury service because of a perception that they do not support the death penalty. “If you have a Jewish woman named Wisenberg, as a prosecutor, you’re not going to want that person on the jury,” Mr. Golde said.

Mr. Quatman first made his allegations about Judge Golde and the Jewish jurors two years ago after running into a lawyer who works with attorneys for Freeman. The former prosecutor said Golde often engaged in freewheeling banter with attorneys.

“Judge Golde’s courtroom was like no other courtroom I’d ever been in,” Mr. Quatman said. “His chambers were like a bazaar. There were times there were so many people in his chambers that I had to sit on the windowsill.”

California’s highest court ordered that yesterday’s hearing be held in Santa Clara County, about 50 miles south of Oakland, in an apparent effort to keep the proceeding away from judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys who knew Golde or the other players in the case.

Judge Murphy is expected to hear more testimony this week before rendering an opinion in the case.