California Legal Brief

The Rule of The People v. The Superior Court of Riverside County is that a former prosecutor must be disqualified from presiding over a Racial Justice Act evidentiary hearing when they were directly involved in making charging decisions and present at staffing meetings where homicide filing decisions were made during the relevant time period being analyzed for institutional bias, under circumstances where the judge's personal involvement in the decision-making process being scrutinized might cause an objective observer to reasonably doubt the judge's impartiality.