McDaniels v. Kirkland’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate ·

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 2 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The state trial judge limited voir dire to thirty minutes total. He explained that this was because jurors filled out questionnaires, the purpose of which was to do away with the need for extensive voir dire. During the voir dire, the prosecutor challenged seven out of ten African-Americans called as potential jurors. Petitioners argued that the prosecutor excluded four of those jurors based on their race. During the Batson hearing in the state court, the trial judge held that Petitioners had established a prima facie case of discrimination and asked the prosecutor to offer race-neutral reasons for the challenges. The prosecutor gave his reasons, and the trial court concluded that there “didn’t appear ... to be any type of racism going on.” Petitioners appealed to the California Court of Appeal (CCA), arguing that the record did not support the prosecutor’s reasons. Petitioners also, contended that, but for a few exceptions, only African-American jurors were asked whether they were sympathetic to the defendants, although the CCA stated that six non-African-American jurors were also asked that question. The trial court held that it was not required to engage in comparative juror analysis because, under then-controlling California law, appellate courts were not to perform comparative juror analysis when the argument was not raised in the trial court. The first day of the voir dire transcript, as well as the questionnaires for stricken jurors, were not included in the CCA record”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. McDaniels v. Kirkland