As you may or may not know, under the fairly recently enacted Racial Justice Act -- effective as of 2021 -- certain types of reasons for peremptorily striking potential jurors are now presumptively. Reasons that you might perhaps think would be valid, and that were definitely valid previously, but no longer.
Here are some of the presumptively invalid reasons under CCP 231.7(e):
(1) Expressing a distrust of or having a negative experience with law enforcement or the criminal legal system.
(2) Expressing a belief that law enforcement officers engage in racial profiling or that criminal laws have been enforced in a discriminatory manner.
(3) Having a close relationship with people who have been stopped, arrested, or convicted of a crime.
(4) A prospective juror's neighborhood.
(5) Having a child outside of marriage.
(6) Receiving state benefits. . . .
(9) Dress, attire, or personal appearance. . . .
(11) Lack of employment or underemployment of the prospective juror or prospective juror's family member.
Once you strike a juror, sometimes the other side objects and you're forced to give a reason for your strike. Not surprisingly, sometimes, you give multiple reasons, if only because, typically, you do indeed have multiple reasons why you don't especially like that particular juror.
The Court of Appeal holds today that if any of the reasons you identify are within the presumptively invalid category, your strike fails. Period. Even if your other, nonprohibited, reasons are a valid basis for the strike.
So, at a minimum, know the words you're not allowed to say. Don't include amongst your reasons for the strike that the juror dresses poorly, isn't employed, distrusted the police or the legal system, etc.
Otherwise, you're going to be stuck with that juror.
Just say the reasons that are allowed, not the other ones.
And, critically, know the difference between the two.
