Court Opinion

ID: 9853698
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:52:30.573722+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:00.881891
License: Public Domain

*301RICHARDSON, J.
I respectfully dissent. As indicated in my dissenting opinion in the companion case of People v. Wheeler (1978) ante, at page 258 [148 Cal.Rptr. 890, 583 P.2d 748], I believe that the majority has placed an improper burden on trial counsel to justify their exercise of peremptory challenges and has, thereby, hampered counsel’s ability to impanel an impartial jury. Further, an unnecessary responsibility has also been placed on the trial court in weighing the challenges to counsels’ use of the peremptories. The present case furnishes a vivid illustration of the unfortunate effect of such a burden.
The prosecutor knew that one or more of his key witnesses had previously referred to defendant as “the nigger” and that such testimony would, in all probability, be elicited at trial. The prosecutor said that he intended to use his peremptory challenges to excuse as many black jurors as possible because he felt that their ability to consider the testimony of such witnesses objectively would be inevitably impaired. The majority finds siich use of peremptory challenges constitutionally impermissible. I disagree.
There can be little doubt that the vicious and demeaning racial epithet here involved, distasteful as it is to the population generally, falls with particular force and intensity on and produces additional revulsion in the group to which it is directed. The question therefore is not, as the majority characterizes it, whether all black jurors without exception will be hostile to a prosecution witness who uses such language, but whether nonblack jurors will be less apt to feel hostility. I do not believe, however much we may wish the contrary, that those who are not the target of the slur can feel the insult so keenly. Human nature being what it is, I would think it probable that those who are not members of a group directly affected by a scurrilous reference would be likely to judge the testimony of their detractor with greater impartiality. To conclude otherwise, in my opinion, is to ignore reality and to engage in a legal fiction which substitutes a surface appearance of impartiality for its substance.
I would affirm the judgment.
Clark, J., concurred.