P. v. Jackson
A jury fails to reach a verdict. Three of the four jurors who vote to acquit the defendant are African-American women. Upon retrial, the prosecutor uses four of his first eight peremptory challenges to strike African-American women from the jury. For one of the African-American women whom he strikes, he offers three justifications in response to the African-American defendant’s motion under People v. Wheeler (1978) 22 Cal.3d 258 (Wheeler): two of those reasons apply to a non-African-American woman in the jury box whom the prosecutor does not strike, and the third reason draws little, if any, support from the record. The court accepts the prosecutor’s reasons and denies the defendant’s Wheeler motion. We reverse.
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