Court Opinion

ID: 9794241
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:01:53.670989+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:13:17.567482
License: Public Domain

KAUFMAN, J.
I concur fully in the decision and opinion of the majority authored by Justice Panelli. I write separately to respond to the concurring and dissenting opinion penned by Justice Broussard (hereafter the dissent). Justice Broussard, apparently frustrated at his inability to persuade a majority to his view, implies that a majority of the members of this court are insensitive to problems of racial and ethnic discrimination, and in a series of decisions have embarked upon an agenda of diminishing the constitutional rights of minority residents of this state. His frustration may be understandable, but his attack on the motives and integrity of the other members of the court is unjustified, improvident and wholly unworthy of him.
*747Today’s decisions in this case and Hernandez v. Municipal Court, ante, page 713 [263 Cal.Rptr. 513, 781 P.2d 547], and the other decisions criticized by the dissent are not and were not based on racial considerations at all, much less racial discrimination. They represent reasoned and reasonable resolutions of procedural problems, adopting rules that will afford trial courts the discretion they require to operate the trial court system and conduct criminal trials in a fair yet expeditious manner. Several of the decisions, basically unrelated, reject arguments based on an unwarranted distrust of the trial judges and public prosecutors of our state that this court should adopt ever more impossibly complex standards of review for appellate courts and procedural rules that would continue to ensnare our criminal courts, trial and appellate, in protracted, resource-consuming proceedings having little to do with guilt or innocence or ultimate justice in the particular case. We should have learned from the experience of the past that justice is not achieved by rules and procedures which sound perfect in theory but are unworkable in practice.
In the specific case of jury selection procedures, this means that while the defendant must be afforded a reasonable opportunity to demonstrate invidious or systematic exclusion of members of a cognizable group, a showing of some underrepresentation at a given time is not enough. Neither the venire nor the jury need mirror the racial, ethnic, or religious composition of the community. Once the jury has been fairly selected, the law assumes that its members, whether Black, White, Hispanic, Catholic, Jew, rich or poor, are equally capable of representing the entire community. The right to trial by a jury of one’s peers does not mean and has never meant that a Black defendant is entitled to be tried by Blacks or a White defendant by Whites. Nor does the right to trial within the vicinage mean that a defendant who commits a crime in Watts has the right to be tried in Watts or that a crime committed in Beverly Hills must be tried in Beverly Hills.
No member of this court, and no thoughtful person in this country today, can be ignorant of the powerful and corrosive force of racism. Nor is there any disagreement on the goal we all seek: a society in which no advantage or disadvantage results from an individual’s race, religion, sex, or ethnic background. There is, however, an emotionally charged debate raging in this country regarding the best means to reach this common goal. According to some, we should eliminate all forms of racial criteria and use only race-neutral procedures. According to others, past wrongs can be redressed and subtle forms of discrimination rooted out only by the use of racial preferences and a heightened race consciousness, hopefully, benign.
It is my personal view that heightened race consciousness and utilization of criteria preferring one race over another, no matter how well intentioned, *748will in the long run be counterproductive to the common goal and will tend to perpetuate racial bias and hostility. But as justices it is not our function in judicial decisions to take sides in this acrimonious debate, although from time to time we are presented with cases which impinge on some aspect of it. References to the supposed purposes, beliefs, convictions or intentions of other justices, however, are no more than ad hominem attacks and should play no part in the opinions of any member of the judiciary. Refraining from such tactics has been a cherished tradition of this court; it pains me deeply that Justice Broussard now appears to cast this tradition aside.
This is not a matter merely of etiquette or decorum. Forceful and reasoned dissents are, of course, valuable tools in the shaping of the law. But attacks on the purposes and assumed intent of one’s colleagues destroy the collegiality essential to the proper functioning of an appellate court, and undermine the public respect and confidence so essential to the rule of law. It would be well remembered that each of us, and indeed every judge of this state, took an oath to uphold the Constitutions of the United States and the State of California and that each of us is as equally devoted to fulfilling that oath as any other.