People v. SanmiguelPeople v. Sanmiguel
For nearly half a century, our law has steadfastly prohibited discrimination on the basis of race or other protected status in selecting juries. (People v. Wheeler (1978) 22 Cal.3d 258, 273 (Wheeler); Batson v. Kentucky (1986) 476 U.S. 79, 91 (Batson).) The reason for this prohibition is as familiar as it is vital to the operation of a system that guarantees equal treatment to all. As our cases have repeatedly and consistently recognized, discrimination in jury selection harms not only litigants and persons called to jury service, but the very integrity of our system of justice.
To enforce the prohibition, the courts in Wheeler and Batson set forth a procedural framework for determining whether a litigant‘s decision to peremptorily challenge a prospective juror was motivated by improper bias. After years of experience applying this framework, commentators increasingly came to question whether the framework is adequate to identify and curb improper discrimination when it occurs. In response to these concerns, the Legislature enacted
This case concerns the provisions of
Here, a prosecutor listed multiple reasons for striking a prospective juror, including a behavior-based reason: that the prospective juror was not as engaged and was less attentive than other prospective jurors. The trial court confirmed the prosecutor‘s observations and overruled the defense‘s
Second, whether a behavior-based reason is found to be valid or invalid is not dispositive of the ultimate inquiry into the presence of unlawful discrimination. If the reason is invalid, it may not be relied on to justify the strike. While reliance on an invalid reason is generally a significant consideration — and, depending on the circumstances, may prove dispositive — a court still must consider any other reasons proffered and other relevant circumstances to determine whether the strike was unlawful under
Because the Court of Appeal in this case did not apply these principles in evaluating the
I.
A.
Because this is our first case interpreting
In selecting a jury, litigants may raise two types of challenges to prospective jurors: for cause and peremptory. (Wheeler, supra, 22 Cal.3d at p. 273;
The federal and state Constitutions, however, place important limits on parties’ ability to strike prospective jurors: While peremptory strikes may be made for virtually any reason, they may not be made because of the prospective juror‘s race or other protected status. Nearly 50 years ago, in Wheeler, this court held that “the use of peremptory challenges to remove prospective jurors on the sole ground of group bias violates the right to trial by a jury drawn from a representative cross-section of the community under
The courts in Wheeler and Batson set forth a substantially similar three-step burden-shifting inquiry to guide the trial court‘s constitutional review of a peremptory strike. (Scott, supra, 61 Cal.4th at p. 383.) Step one of the Batson/Wheeler test requires the defendant to “make out a prima facie case ‘by showing that the totality of the relevant facts gives rise to an inference of discriminatory purpose.’ ” (Johnson v. California (2005) 545 U.S. 162, 168.) If the defendant makes out a prima facie case, the second step shifts the burden ” ‘to the State to explain adequately the racial exclusion’ by offering permissible race-neutral justifications for the strikes.” (Ibid.) At step three, the trial court decides ” ‘whether the opponent of the strike has proved purposeful racial discrimination.’ ” (Ibid.)
After many years of experience employing this framework, commentators in California and in other parts of the country increasingly raised concerns about its adequacy in addressing the problem of discrimination in jury selection. Several states across the country began to study the issue and consider potential reforms. (See Jury Selection Work Group: Final Report to the Supreme Court of California (July 2022) p. 2, fn. 2 [describing efforts in Washington, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Connecticut, and New Jersey].)1 In 2020, this court appointed a workgroup to study issues related to discrimination in jury
The legislative findings and declarations accompanying Assembly Bill No. 3070 plainly describe the impetus for reform. Finding “that peremptory challenges are frequently used in criminal cases to exclude potential jurors from serving based on their race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, or religious affiliation, or perceived membership in any of those groups, and that exclusion from jury service has disproportionately harmed African Americans, Latinos, and other people of color,” the Legislature crafted procedures intended to further the important “purpose of eliminating the use of group stereotypes and discrimination, whether based on conscious or unconscious bias, in the exercise of peremptory challenges.” (Stats. 2020, ch. 318, § 1, subds. (b), (c).) The statute, now codified as
B.
Section 231.7 prohibits removing a prospective juror on the basis of the prospective juror‘s actual or perceived “race,
If another party or the trial court objects to the use of a peremptory challenge, then the party that exercised the peremptory challenge must state the reasons for the challenge; there is no requirement that the objecting party first establish a prima facie case of discrimination. The trial court evaluates the reasons given and rules on the objection, stating its reasons on the record. (
Perhaps the most significant departure from Batson/Wheeler concerns the standard the court applies in making this determination. In passing
The statute sets out two categories of reasons that, because of their association with discrimination, are treated as invalid unless certain conditions are met. (
The first category is set out in
The second category, set forth in
The statute states that if a court finds a peremptory challenge improper during jury selection and the objecting party so requests, the court must “[q]uash the jury venire and start jury selection anew.” (
A denial of a
Defendant Joel SanMiguel was tried by jury for willful, deliberate, premeditated attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon, along with associated enhancements. (
The prosecutor initially gave several reasons. First, “the victim in this case . . . is also Hispanic. I wouldn‘t have a reason to kick Hispanic people when I have a Hispanic on Hispanic crime.” Second, S.M. “didn‘t have much of anything to say. His responses were extremely brief.” Third, “[t]here are other people in the following six that are on the front that I believe will be jurors that I prefer more to [S.M.].” And fourth, another prospective juror “has a Hispanic surname. I have not kicked her.”
The trial court requested clarification to understand “exactly what the explanation was because the explanation sounded like it was [S.M.] didn‘t really say much of anything.” The prosecutor reiterated that S.M. “did not have much to say about what my questions were.” The prosecutor then added “another” reason: that S.M. “was not fully following some of the orders from the Court. He walked out with papers, walked back in during breaks.” The prosecutor clarified he was referring to
The trial court “confirm[ed] exactly what the prosecutor did say . . . about [S.M.‘s] body language.” It “notice[d] that . . . [S.M.] ha[d] a very flat affect, and he [was] looking down most of the time. He [was] not responding to questions the same way everybody else d[id]. There [was] no — he‘s not making eye contact at all. He was doing the same thing with the Court.” The court continued “that [S.M.] did enter the courtroom at a time when nobody else did,” which was not “a violation of a Court order, necessarily, but it show[ed] that he‘s not paying attention to what everybody else is doing.” The court “den[ied] the motion based on 231.7,” reiterating that it “understands what the prosecutor is saying, and the Court can confirm the same thing.”
At the completion of trial, the jury convicted SanMiguel of attempted premeditated murder (
On appeal, SanMiguel argued the trial court erred in denying his
Justice Cody, dissenting in part, “disagree[d] . . . with the majority‘s conclusion that the presumption of invalidity was overcome.” (SanMiguel, supra, 105 Cal.App.5th at p. 894 (dis. opn. of Cody, J.).) Because the “prosecutor never explained why S.M.‘s behavior ‘matter[ed] to the case to be tried,’ ” Justice Cody concluded that the court “must treat as conclusive the presumption that [S.M.] was excused for invalid, discriminatory reasons.” (Id. at pp. 894–895 (dis. opn. of Cody, J.).) Justice Cody noted: “One may well wonder why behaviors like inattentiveness would require further explanation.” (Id. at p. 895 (dis. opn. of Cody, J.).) But the court was not, in her view, “at liberty to delete the unambiguous explanation requirement.” (Ibid.) Justice Cody added that “[t]he prosecutor‘s remaining reasons for challenging S.M. [were] unsupported by the record or [were] otherwise unpersuasive.” (Ibid.) We granted review to address the court‘s interpretation of
II.
We consider the interpretation of
The primary issue SanMiguel raises is whether the presumptive invalidity of a behavior-based reason for striking a prospective juror has been rebutted when the trial court confirms that the asserted behavior occurred but counsel has not explained why the behavior “matters to the case to be tried.” (
Even though the parties agree on this first, threshold point, it bears further examination. The question whether the explanation required by
The parties’ view that an explanation is required to rebut the presumption of invalidity tracks the rule articulated by appellate courts to address the issue. Although none has engaged in extensive analysis, all of the Courts of Appeal (with the arguable exception of the court in this case) have read the statute as setting up two requirements for rebutting the statutory presumption that a behavior-based reason is invalid: (1) confirmation of the behavior; and (2) an explanation of why the behavior matters. (People v. Ortiz (2023) 96 Cal.App.5th 768, 794 (Ortiz); People v. Caparrotta (2024) 103 Cal.App.5th 874, 890–891 (Caparrotta); People v. Barnes (2024) 107 Cal.App.5th 560, 582.)
We are not, however, bound by the parties’ or the appellate courts’ interpretation of the law; its meaning falls to us to decide. (See, e.g., People v. Lopez (2020) 9 Cal.5th 254, 268.) And although we ultimately take the same view, the issue is not as straightforward as the case law or the parties’ agreement might suggest. Only confirmation is explicitly described in
The text alone does not clearly tell us whether an explanation is required to rebut the presumption of invalidity under
To answer the first question, we start by reviewing the Legislature‘s overarching purposes in enacting
As numerous courts have recognized, demeanor- and behavior-based reasons, by their nature, pose several potential challenges and risks. For one, ” ‘explanations which focus upon a venireperson‘s body language or demeanor . . . are subjective and can easily be used . . . as a pretext for excluding persons on the basis of race’ ” or other protected status. (People v. Hicks (2024) 103 Cal.App.5th 1229, 1240; see also Harris v. Hardy (7th Cir. 2012) 680 F.3d 942, 965 (Harris) [“Demeanor-based explanations for a strike are particularly susceptible to serving as pretexts for discrimination“].) Demeanor- or behavior-based strikes can also reflect unconsciously held attitudes rooted in stereotypes or cultural misunderstandings. (See Batson, supra, 476 U.S. at p. 106 (conc. opn. of Marshall, J.) [“A prosecutor‘s own conscious or unconscious racism may lead him easily to the conclusion that a prospective black juror is ‘sullen,’ or ‘distant,’ a characterization that would not have come to his mind if a white juror had acted identically“]; see also, e.g., Tremblay, Interviewing and Counseling Across Cultures: Heuristics and Biases (2002) 9 Clinical L.Rev. 373, 394 [explaining that cultural differences in patterns of eye contact can lead to a mistaken “inference that the listener is inattentive“].) In some cases, what a striking party interprets as a problematic attitude may in reality represent a reasonable reaction to the striking party‘s own exhibition of bias or other problematic behavior. (See People v. Silas (2021) 68 Cal.App.5th 1057, 1106 [observing, where prosecutor gave as a reason for striking a Black prospective juror that she was “openly hostile” in response to questioning about Black Lives Matter, that the prospective juror
The requirements of
To understand the function of the explanation requirement is to understand both the nature of the requirement and why it is a necessary condition for overcoming the presumption of invalidity. The statute does not specify a set of magic words the striking party must use to explain why an observed behavior matters to the case. Nor does it specify a particular sequence or order of operations in which confirmation of the behavior and explanation of its relevance must occur. While the statutory language sets forth requirements — the party must state reasons for exercising the peremptory challenge (
The Court of Appeal in this case appeared to dismiss the significance of the explanation requirement because it considered the relevance of behaviors like “inattentiveness” — a behavior expressly enumerated in the statute — to be too obvious to require explanation. (See SanMiguel, supra, 105 Cal.App.5th at p. 890; see also id. at p. 895 (dis. opn. of Cody, J.) [also questioning why the statute requires the striking party to explain the relevance of juror inattentiveness].) For a certain kind of observations about inattentiveness, the Court of
Where the striking party observes a specific behavior that is obviously inconsistent with a prospective juror‘s duty to pay attention to courtroom proceedings — say, continuously sleeping while the court provides instructions — the observation alone may well be sufficient to enable a court to evaluate the reason as part of the
But the same is not true of many reasons that might relate to “inattentiveness” in some broad sense. If the striking party says a prospective juror was excused because the juror appeared not to be paying attention when another member of the jury venire was talking during a break, it is not clear what case-
Because nearly all behavior-based conclusions about a prospective juror‘s fitness for service will involve some degree of inferential reasoning, litigants should strongly err on the side of explaining what inferences they are drawing from the conduct they observe in the courtroom. The risks of failing to provide an adequate explanation are high. Ultimately, if the striking party does not offer enough information to permit the court to assess whether the behavior-based reason for the strike was infected with bias, then the statute cannot fulfill its central goal of identifying and eradicating discrimination, whether conscious or unconscious, in the selection of jurors. It follows ineluctably that the presumption of invalidity has not been rebutted.
C.
The question remains, however: What does it mean to say the presumption of invalidity has or has not been rebutted? SanMiguel, relying on the Court of Appeal‘s decision in
To resolve this debate, we return to the statutory text.
Drawing on Caparrotta, SanMiguel argues that when the striking party gives a behavior-based reason and the confirmation or explanation requirement for that behavior-based reason is not satisfied, the behavior-based reason becomes conclusively invalid. And if the reason is conclusively invalid,
This argument misreads the presumption that a
We have no occasion here to consider the effect of failing to rebut the presumption of invalidity under
As a logical matter, failure to rebut the presumption that a behavior-based reason is invalid assuredly means that the reason should not be relied on to justify the strike, because the risk of pretextual or other improper use remains.4 But failure
to rebut the presumption is not necessarily determinative of whether an objective observer would likely view discrimination as a factor in the peremptory challenge, without regard to the other circumstances present in the case. Imagine, for example, that an attorney exercises a peremptory challenge on the ground the prospective juror was rolling her eyes when the attorney was speaking, but neither the trial court nor opposing counsel saw the eye rolling. In this scenario, because the behavior cannot be confirmed, the statute states explicitly that the presumption of invalidity is not rebutted. (
The same is true for the explanation requirement. Imagine an attorney exercises a peremptory challenge because a prospective juror repeatedly and loudly sighed, in what
To conclude that a peremptory challenge fails if the striking party provides any behavior-based reason that is unaccompanied by confirmation from the court or an explanation by the striking party not only would test the bounds of logic, but it might well compromise the important goals that Assembly Bill No. 3070 aims to achieve. If the court were required to automatically sustain a
Ultimately, whether a
Of course, in a situation where the court determines that a behavior-based reason is in fact indicative of bias, such a finding — regardless of other reasons offered for the strike — will establish for purposes of the overarching
D.
To sum up: Even though
But in any event — whether the reason is considered invalid or not — the court must then proceed to ask the ultimate question under
III.
With these general principles about
To the extent the Court of Appeal concluded that the explanation requirement is dispensable, we conclude it erred. But neither the court nor the parties have yet had the opportunity to consider the issue in light of this court‘s guidance about what the prosecutor was required to explain. Specifically, neither side has yet explored whether, how, or why the prosecutor‘s statement of reasons did or did not convey why S.M.‘s observed behaviors mattered to the case, such that the court could adequately evaluate the reason as part of its overarching determination of whether an objective observer would view race or other protected status as a factor in the exercise of the peremptory challenge. We thus allow the parties and the court to address that issue in the first instance.
We caution, however, that the answer to that question is not dispositive of the appeal. For reasons already explained, a finding that the presumption of invalidity was not overcome means the reason may not be relied on to justify the strike, but it does not, as SanMiguel has argued, definitively establish that the strike was invalid. Conversely, even if the Court of Appeal was correct in concluding that the presumption of invalidity was adequately rebutted, the Court of Appeal erred in treating a concern that S.M. was comparatively less attentive than other prospective jurors as independently dispositive of the
Moreover, the prosecutor raised inattentiveness as a justification only after giving several other reasons for striking S.M. Of those initial reasons, the only one pertaining to S.M. was the brevity of his answers. That the prosecutor had no “reason to kick Hispanic people” and that he preferred “other people in the following six” does not explain why the prosecutor considered S.M. to be an undesirable juror. (Cf. Batson, supra, 476 U.S. at p. 98 [a prosecutor may not rebut a defendant‘s
The Court of Appeal‘s opinion also did not address other relevant circumstances, such as “[t]he number and types of questions” the prosecutor posed to S.M.; the race of SanMiguel and the alleged victim; whether the prosecutor “question[ed] [S.M.] about the concerns later stated . . . as the reason for the peremptory challenge“; “[w]hether other prospective jurors . . . provided similar, but not necessarily identical, answers but were not the subject of a peremptory challenge“; and whether race “bear[s] on the facts of the case to be tried.” (
Because the Court of Appeal treated S.M. being less attentive as S.M. being inattentive and further concluded S.M.‘s inattention by itself was dispositive as to the
We end with a reminder for all litigants and courts that face similar issues. The Legislature enacted
IV.
We reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
We Concur:
GUERRERO, C. J.
CORRIGAN, J.
LIU, J.
GROBAN, J.
EVANS, J.
EGERTON, J.*
* Associate Justice of the Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Three, assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California Constitution.