Reported / Citable
Background
Enrique Aguilar was charged with multiple felonies stemming from a 2019 foot chase and shootout with San Diego police officers. After a 2023 jury trial, he was convicted of two counts of attempted voluntary manslaughter, three counts of assaulting a peace officer with a semiautomatic firearm, and several other firearm and drug offenses, and sentenced to 166 years to life in prison.
The dispute on appeal arose during jury selection. The prosecutor used a hypothetical about a customer at an In-N-Out Burger to test whether the prospective jurors understood the legal concept of intent. After hearing answers from a male epidemiologist (Juror 4) and the only Latina in that group (Juror 1), the prosecutor exercised a peremptory challenge to strike Juror 1. Defense counsel objected, arguing that two earlier strikes had also targeted prospective jurors the defense believed were Hispanic, and that Juror 1 had answered the hypothetical essentially the same way Juror 4 had.
The trial judge accepted the prosecutor’s explanation that Juror 1 was ‘equivocal’ and ‘confused’ about intent, and overruled the objection. Aguilar appealed, arguing that the trial court’s finding was not supported by substantial evidence under amended Code of Civil Procedure section 231.7, which California enacted to replace the old Batson/Wheeler framework with a stricter, no-purposeful-discrimination-required standard.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeal reversed the entire judgment and ordered a new trial. Reviewing the voir dire transcript independently, the panel concluded that the record was ‘devoid of evidence’ that Juror 1 was actually confused about the concept of intent. To the contrary, her answer (‘I wouldn’t assume that her intention was not to eat the cheeseburger’) reached the same conclusion as Juror 4’s answer; she simply phrased it using a double negative.
Under section 231.7, when the prosecution offers a ‘presumptively invalid’ or otherwise scrutinized reason for striking a juror, the trial court must verify that the stated reason has factual support in the record. Mere subjective impressions of confusion are not enough. Because the In-N-Out exchange did not show Juror 1 misunderstanding intent, the prosecutor’s stated rationale was not supported by substantial evidence, and the strike violated the statute.
The court emphasized that section 231.7 — which since 2022 has applied in California criminal trials and as of January 2026 also applies in certain civil cases — was specifically designed to prevent both purposeful and unconscious bias in jury selection. Where a court adopts a stated reason that is contradicted by the transcript, the statutory remedy of reversal applies regardless of how strong the rest of the case may be.
Key Takeaways
- Trial courts cannot rubber-stamp a prosecutor’s subjective characterization of a juror as ‘confused’ or ‘equivocal’; the record itself must support the explanation.
- Section 231.7 review by the Court of Appeal is independent. Appellate panels will reread the voir dire transcript and overturn rulings that lack substantial supporting evidence.
- When two jurors give substantively similar answers and only the minority juror is struck, that disparity is itself powerful evidence the stated reason is pretextual.
- Reversal under section 231.7 is essentially automatic once a violation is found — there is no harmless-error escape valve, even in cases involving very long sentences.
- Effective January 1, 2026, section 231.7 reaches certain civil trials, so civil litigators should expect the same scrutiny of peremptory challenges that criminal practitioners have faced since 2022.
Why It Matters
This decision is one of the strongest enforcement signals yet that California’s anti-bias jury-selection statute has real teeth. The opinion shows that vague descriptions of a juror’s demeanor or ‘tone’ will not survive appellate review when the cold record contradicts them. Prosecutors and defense lawyers alike must build a contemporaneous, objectively verifiable record before exercising a peremptory challenge against a juror in a protected group, and trial judges must do more than recite the statutory language — they must independently assess whether the stated reason is actually supported by what the juror said.
For civil practitioners, the message is even more pointed: starting in January 2026, section 231.7 reaches some civil cases, meaning that an unsupported peremptory strike can now blow up a multi-week civil trial just as it can a criminal one. Lawyers handling jury trials in California should plan voir dire with section 231.7 in mind from the outset, including taking detailed notes that document neutral, fact-based reasons for every challenge.