What is the impact of inflammatory remarks made by a prospective juror at jury selection?

California, United States of America


The following excerpt is from People v. Betz, C082908 (Cal. App. 2018):

prospective juror reported that several other panel members made inflammatory remarks indicating their certainty that the defendant was guilty, but those panel members did not serve on the jury, all jury members affirmed their ability to be fair and impartial, and the defendant did not exhaust his peremptory challenges. In People v. Martinez (1991) 228 Cal.App.3d 1456, 1461, 1465-1468, the trial court's decision not to dismiss the panel was affirmed where during jury selection some prospective jurors made inflammatory remarks indicating the defendant was not an upstanding citizen and was involved with drugs because he did not speak English. Defendant claims this case is worse than Medina and Martinez solely based on the prospective juror's self-professed role as a data scientist, which defendant claims would cause the other prospective jurors to believe him and be unable to disregard his comments. We are not persuaded that in this instance the jurors were unable to disregard the prospective juror's statement, if indeed they understood it to convey what defendant claims it does.

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