4 Cal. 5th 1134 - People v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “'laundry list' " approach to justifying a peremptory strike "carries a significant danger: * that the trial court will take a short-cut in its determination of the prosecutor's credibility, picking one plausible item from the list and summarily accepting it without considering whether the prosecutor's explanation as a whole, including offered reasons that are implausible or unsupported by the prospective juror's questionnaire and voir dire, indicates a pretextual justification. A prosecutor's positing of multiple reasons, some of which, upon examination, prove implausible or unsupported by the facts, can in some circumstances fatally impair the prosecutor's credibility. [Citation.] In assessing credibility at the third stage of a Batson / Wheeler decision, trial courts should attempt to evaluate the attorney's statement of reasons as a whole rather than focus exclusively on one or two of the reasons offered.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 6 Cal. 5th 735 - People v. Armstrong