Opinion ID: 844263
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Asserted Tainting of Jury Panel

Text: In describing the case to a panel of prospective jurors, the trial judge mistakenly mentioned a special circumstance allegation of intentional killing because of race within the meaning of section 190.2, subdivision (a)(16), which had been included in the original information but was subsequently stricken in pretrial proceedings. Soliz, joined by Gonzales, contends (1) that the trial court erred in denying a defense motion to dismiss the entire panel predicated on the remark, and (2) that evidence of gang motivation for the murders of Skyles and Price later presented at trial aggravated the prejudicial effect of the remark, resulting in a violation of defendants' constitutional rights. As explained below, we conclude the trial court's remarks did not constitute reversible error. Soliz contends the trial court's erroneous reference to a racial motivation for the killings infected the trial with unfairness, making the resulting conviction a denial of due process. ( Donnelly v. DeChristoforo (1974) 416 U.S. 637, 643 [40 L.Ed.2d 431, 94 S.Ct. 1868].) We do not see the trial court's remarks as rising to this level. Soliz does not deny that about a week later, when the first panel of prospective jurors returned to the courtroom after submitting their questionnaires, the trial court correctly summarized the charges and allegations without mentioning the former allegations of racial motivation. Soliz contends, however, that the prejudicial effect of the trial court's remark was aggravated by the prosecutor's later presentation at trial of evidence that the killing of Skyles and Price was gang related. As recounted, the prosecution's expert witness on gangs, Detective Lusk, testified that the murders of Skyles and Price were probably gang retaliation killings motivated by the earlier killing of Billy Gallegos, a member of the Hispanic Puente gang, by members of the Neighborhood Crips, an African-American gang. Lusk testified that victims of gang retaliation shootings are targeted for being within the general area of the rival gang, for being a certain race, and for wearing a certain style of clothing. Defendant Soliz cites Dawson v. Delaware (1992) 503 U.S. 159, 165 [117 L.Ed.2d 309, 112 S.Ct. 1093], for the proposition that to allow evidence of racism that has no relevance to the proceedings in a capital case is federal constitutional error. In Dawson, the high court held that the defendant's constitutional rights were violated when, at the penalty phase of his capital trial, the prosecutor introduced a stipulation that the defendant belonged to the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang. The court held this evidence was not relevant to prove any aggravating circumstance and proved nothing more than the defendant's abstract beliefs. [11] ( Dawson, at pp. 166-167.) In the case before us, Soliz contends Lusk's testimony was evidence that Skyles and Price were intentionally killed because of their race, despite the striking of the race-motivation special-circumstance allegation. Lusk, however, did not state that Skyles and Price were killed because of their race. Rather, his testimony was that they might have been targeted because they fit the profile of a rival gang member, one element of which was being African-American. [12] The evidence presented at defendants' trial was therefore distinguishable from the irrelevant evidence of racial prejudice criticized by the high court in Dawson. We therefore reject defendants' contention that the trial court's mistaken reference to the stricken special circumstance so infected their trial with unfairness that it denied them due process of law. The trial court's reference was brief, was subsequently corrected, and was not aggravated by later events at trial.