I understand the whole part of this opinion about not necessarily being able to strike minority jurors due to their "attitude". That's an amorphous and essentially unreviewable category, as well as an attribution that's historically been differentially directed towards African-Americans (e.g., calling someone "uppity").
So when Justice McConnell doesn't think that explanation for striking the juror flies, I can potentially get behind that.
But this particular juror disclosed that she had two prior felony convictions. One for grand theft. The other for perjury.
I know that she said that she could be fair. Pretty much every juror says the same thing. But I don't know a prosecutor in the universe who'd want on their jury someone with multiple felony convictions -- including one for perjury, hardly a typical offense. Regardless of their race.
The Court of Appeal nonetheless reverses and remands for a new trial, finding that the trial court erred by finding the prosecutor's reasons for his peremptory strike of this juror race-neutral.
That's a tough one for me. Particularly since the prosecutor didn't strike the other African-American on the jury venire. It's just difficult to believe that a similarly-situated white juror wouldn't be struck for the identical reasons.
Maybe opinions like this one are a backhanded way of just getting rid of peremptory challenges entirely. Which might not be a bad thing anyway. I think that, normally, prosecutors find peremptory challenges more valuable than defense counsel, so would ordinarily fight to retain them as an option. But if even the "normal" reasons for striking jurors start to result in potential reversals, maybe now both sides can get on board for eliminating them.
Still, I think that there are a lot of panels in the Court of Appeal that would have come out differently on this one.
Lots.
