Reported / Citable
Background
Joseph Manuel Montes was sentenced to death after a 1996 trial in which the prosecutor used peremptory challenges to remove six Black prospective jurors and five Latino prospective jurors. Peremptory challenges ordinarily allow counsel to excuse a prospective juror without stating a reason, but they may not be used discriminatorily. Montes later sought the prosecution’s jury-selection notes through California’s postconviction discovery statute.
The trial court relied on an earlier appellate decision, Box v. Superior Court, and required Montes to establish a prima facie case of racial bias before receiving the notes. While the dispute was developing, the Legislature amended Penal Code section 1054.9 to identify prosecution jury-selection notes expressly as discoverable material and to provide a process for the prosecution to seek redactions for good cause. Montes petitioned for a writ directing the trial court to apply the amended statute.
The Court’s Holding
The Fourth District granted relief and held that the statutory amendment displaced Box’s prima facie requirement. A defendant requesting postconviction discovery no longer must first produce evidence sufficient to raise an inference of discriminatory jury selection. The request instead shifts the burden to the prosecution to establish good cause for shielding or redacting the notes.
The statute makes that burden readily satisfied when the prosecution exercised no peremptory challenges, because the notes then have no meaningful connection to a discriminatory-strike claim. But the prosecutor in Montes’s capital trial did exercise numerous challenges. The prosecution had not invoked or proved good cause under the new framework, so the trial court could not deny access using the superseded threshold.
The court returned the matter for the trial court to decide any good-cause request the prosecution chooses to make. It emphasized that the Legislature may authorize discovery broader than the minimum evidence constitutionally necessary to prove a Batson/Wheeler violation.
Key Takeaways
- Penal Code section 1054.9 now makes prosecution jury-selection notes available in postconviction discovery without a prima facie showing of racial bias.
- Once notes are requested, the prosecution bears the burden to show good cause for withholding or redacting them.
- No use of peremptory challenges will ordinarily establish good cause because the notes cannot illuminate discriminatory strikes.
- Where challenges were exercised, courts must use the Legislature’s new disclosure-and-redaction framework rather than the former Box standard.
Why It Matters
Postconviction counsel investigating discriminatory jury selection now has a substantially easier route to the contemporaneous notes that may confirm or refute a claim. Trial courts should update discovery procedures immediately and should not demand that a prisoner prove the suspected discrimination before obtaining the material most likely to reveal it.
District attorneys should preserve jury-selection notes and be prepared to identify specific grounds for proposed redactions. A generalized appeal to work product or the former prima facie rule will not substitute for the statute’s good-cause showing.