Biased Jury Selection Gets California Death Row Inmate New Trial

An inmate convicted and sentenced to death in California received federal relief from the Ninth Circuit, after it found the prosecutor showed bias in using peremptory challenges to strike the only three Black jurors from the panel.

The California courts’ acceptance of the prosecutor’s reasons lacked justification and deprived Marvin Walker of his constitutional rights, the unpublished opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said July 31.

The prosecutor’s reasons for the strikes were unreasonable, irrelevant, demonstrably false, or not equally applied to non-Black members allowed to serve on the jury, the court said.

For example, ...