OAKLAND — As a jury this week decides the fate of an Oakland man convicted of killing an 8-year-old girl and a man with whom he argued over a dice game, the case marks a turning point for Alameda County and its district attorney, Nancy O’Malley.

It’s the first death penalty trial in the county since O’Malley took office seven years ago.

She’s had 103 other cases where she could have sought the death penalty. And except for one other case, where she initially sought death but reversed the decision before trial, this is the only one she’s pursued.

So, why this case, of all cases?

Because of a gag order, O’Malley, defense attorneys and prosecutors wouldn’t talk about the case against Darnell Williams, 25, of Oakland, who was convicted last week of killing Alaysha Carradine, 8, as she was spending the night with a friend in Oakland, and Anthony Medearis, 22, after the two fought over a dice game in Berkeley.

But Steven Clark, a former Santa Clara County prosecutor and now a criminal defense attorney who has no connection to the Williams case, said seeking the death penalty in 2016 is almost a symbolic gesture, given that the courts have placed executions on hold in the state.

Still, the murder of a young girl who was indiscriminately targeted in the crossfire of a crime, and the fact that the defendant later committed another murder, can contribute to reasons to make a death recommendation, Clark said.

“It’s someone that clearly isn’t following society’s rules,” he said. “That’s the kind of defendant you look for.”

The outcome of this kind of case, he said, could also set the tone for future death penalty recommendations in Alameda County.

If the jury doesn’t sentence Williams to death, “then you re-evaluate if it’s a community that wants the death penalty. It’s a feeling out process,” Clark said.

“If it’s not this case, then what is it?” he said.

Before O’Malley took office in 2009, the last time the district attorney prosecuted a death penalty case was for David Mills — sentenced to death in 2012 for killing three people in Oakland in 2005. O’Malley’s predecessor, Tom Orloff, pursued 47 death penalty cases during his 15-year stint as district attorney, four of which were in his last four years in office.

O’Malley first recommended the death penalty in the case of a Castro Valley man who used a screwdriver that he shaved into a shank to fatally stab his longtime companion in front of a Hayward medical office where she worked in 2009. But O’Malley reversed that decision, she said later, because the victim’s family wanted a speedy trial resolution.

By comparison, San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe’s office has reviewed 26 death penalty-eligible cases since taking office in 2011 but has never recommended death. Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, who also took office in 2011, has reviewed eight such cases and recommended prosecution for two current death penalty cases — Antolin Garcia-Torres for the alleged kidnapping and killing of Sierra LaMar and Alejandro Benitez for the alleged brutal rape and death of a 16-month-old boy. San Francisco hasn’t seen a district attorney — including Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is now running for a senate seat — seek the death penalty since the 1990s.

Clark said that prosecutors may go for death because of a societal demand for justice.

“The symbolism of a young child caught in a murder like this, if society is going to return a death verdict, this is it,” Clark said.

Family members of Williams’ victims agreed with the decision. “I want justice for my baby,” said Medearis’ aunt, Jackie Winters, who was in court every day during the monthlong trial.

The sentiment is echoed by the family of Alaysha, whom the slain girl’s cousin, Shaquilla Jackson, said they called “Ladybug.”

During Williams’ trial, prosecutor John Brouhard called his crimes a “rampage of violence.” Alaysha died on July 17, 2013, after Williams went to the apartment where she was sleeping over to get revenge for the death of his friend who was gunned down earlier that day. Williams went to the apartment, prosecutors said, intent on hurting loved ones of the man he believed killed his friend. When the kids opened the door, Williams fired a barrage of bullets through the screen door, apparently aiming at a woman on the couch behind them.

Medearis died Sept. 8, 2013, after he and Williams argued over a dice game. Williams shot Medearis in the back as he ran away.

Frank Zimring, a UC Berkeley law professor and death penalty expert, said Alaysha’s slaying was a case of “extreme victimization” of an innocent girl caught in an enormous violence. There wasn’t a fight between equals; the gunfire blasted through the door, he said.

Even an office that wouldn’t touch the death penalty with a 10-foot pole would feel an obligation to do so “in an extraordinary case of unprovoked and meaningless violence,” he said.

Still, an actual execution could be 20 years out or more. Most death row inmates die waiting for execution rather than actually being executed by the state, a result of a yearslong appeals process and the fact the executions in the state are on hold because of an ongoing legal battle over the lethal injection protocol.

One federal judge once called death penalty sentences in the state “life in prison with a remote possibility of death.” Since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978, the state has executed 13 inmates, the last of which was January 2006. There are 743 death row inmates as of Jan. 1, awaiting execution in California, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

There are 42 inmates from Alameda County alone on death row, at least nine of whom have had their appeals exhausted.

Though the gag order prevented her from talking about the Williams case, O’Malley talked in general about how she views such cases in a 2012 interview with this newspaper.

“It’s not a lightweight decision to make. We should be pondering this decision and looking at it from all angles,” O’Malley said then. “My own personal feeling is that if we make that recommendation, it would be rarely done because we want it to be reserved for the most heinous cases.”

Angela Ruggiero can be contacted at 510-293-2469 or Twitter.com/aeruggie.