The California Supreme Court [official website], in an opinion overturning three Kern County attempted murder convictions for alleged jury tampering, unanimously ruled [opinion, PDF] on Thursday that judges must thoroughly examine prosecutor decisions to exclude potential jurors to ensure there is no racial bias. In so ruling, the Court concluded that the trial judge erred in rejecting the three Hispanic defendants, Rene Gutierrez Jr., Ramiro Enriquez, and Gabriel Ramos’s, claims that a potential juror was dismissed because she was also Hispanic. The prosecutor had used 10 of 16 peremptory challenges to remove other Hispanic individuals from the jury, which prompted defendants to file a motion challenging the juror exclusions. Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar opined that “taints of discriminatory bias in jury selections – actual or perceived – erode confidence in the adjudicative process” and offends Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment constitutional guarantees of the right to a fair trial [text, Cornell] and equal protection of the laws [text, Cornell]. The Court additionally ruled that the Court of Appeals erred by refusing to conduct comparative juror analysis to determine the credibility of the prosecutor’s explanations for dismissing or approving each juror. The Court reversed the judgment of the Court of Appeals, and remanded the case.

Implications of racial bias have called for a higher scrutiny of trial court decisions, jury verdicts, and the general political process outside of the judiciary. In March the US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [JURIST report] in Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado [SCOTUSblog materials] that a juror’s racial bias created an exception to the no-impeachment rule which limited the second-guessing of jury verdicts. In April a special federal judicial panel in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas [official website] ruled [JURIST report] that the redistricting plan adopted by Texas legislature was deliberately drawn to diminish the influence of the growing Latino voting population. A month earlier the Supreme Court ruled [JURIST report] that Virginia’s redistricting scheme must be examined for racial bias. In January the Supreme Court blocked a ruling [JURIST report] ordering the redrawing of the congressional district map and special elections to be held in North Carolina for racial gerrymandering.