California Court of Appeal

Conviction of defendant for two counts of making a criminal threat is reversed, where: 1) the trial court erred in denying defendant's Batson/Wheeler motions alleging that the prosecutor had discriminated against men in exercising peremptory challenges during jury selection; 2) purposeful discrimination in the exercise of peremptory challenges is structural error that is reversible per se; and 3) the prosecutor's failure to articulate anything about Jurors 6 and 32 as the basis for striking them after the trial court had found a prima facie case of group bias did nothing to dispel the reasonable inference that the prosecutor preferred women to men and was exercising her peremptory challenges to effect that preference.

Appellate Information

• Decided 02/09/2015
• Published 02/09/2015

Judges

• Perluss

Court

• California Court of Appeal

Counsel