Pity the prosecution when the judge not only gets the law wrong, but actively stops the prosecutor from getting it right and keeping the record “squeaky clean.”
In March 1998, Terry Darnell Williams was in L.A. Superior Court on charges of second-degree armed robbery. Williams is African American, and when three of the prosecutor’s four peremptory challenges were for black prospective jurors, Williams’ public defender immediately raised a Wheeler objection (the California equivalent to the federal Batson objection to stacking a jury). Judge George Wu — perhaps not wanting to slow down the tedious jury selection process — shot down the PD’s motion, which triggered a series of appeals that led to Thursday’s Ninth Circuit opinion vacating Williams’ conviction.
Details here from Law.com's Legal Pad. The Ninth Circuit's opinion is here.