It's always disturbed me that California DAs get to effectively bounce pro-defendant judges from criminal dockets through blanket peremptory challenges. Seems wrong.
Then, today, I read this opinion, which seems equally, if not more, abusive.
San Diego has a Behavioral Health Court that's designed to be an alternative forum for defendants with severe mental illness. Rather than incarceration, defendants receive lengthy supervised treatment under formal supervised probation. Trial courts can make referrals to have defendants screened for participation in the Behavioral Health Court, and often do so via agreement by the parties (i.e., the prosecutor and the defendant, often as part of a plea deal), but occasionally do so even when the prosecutor isn't on board for the referral. Ultimately, it's the judge's call whether the defendant is successfully screened for participation in the Behavioral Health Court.
There's only one judge on the Behavioral Health Court, who's full time there. The San Diego District Attorney wasn't happy about defendants occasionally being screened and/or accepted into that program without their consent. So the office had a simple solution: They just filed a peremptory challenge against the sole Behavioral Health Court judge whenever they objected to the defendant's participation. No judge, no program. Done.
The trial court blocked the challenges, but the Court of Appeal reverses. Policy successful.
Yet another argument, in my view, against peremptory challenges to judges in criminal cases.
