California's "Racial Justice Act" Puts Minorities In Danger

The Racial Justice Act establishes a new state cause of action that simply presumes that the justice system is biased, obviating the need to show individual discriminatory intent.

The Act’s drafters and supporters justify the exclusion of criminal history from statistical analysis via circular reasoning: They claim criminal history is infected by the same bias that infects everything else in the criminal-justice system. The act establishes an infinite regress of bias. If a prosecutor tries to offer what the law calls “race neutral reasons” for either past prosecutions or the one under challenge, those reasons can themselves be discounted as the product of “systemic and institutional racial bias, racial profiling, and historical patterns of racially biased policing and prosecution.” There is no clear way out of the presumption of racial guilt.

On Feb. 14, a state appellate court in San Diego held that a police officer can be guilty of implicit bias against black drivers even if he doesn’t know the race of the driver he stops. Not surprisingly, defense attorneys are now tacking on Racial Justice Act claims to almost any case involving minority defendants.

By mandating disparate treatment based on race, the Racial Justice Act will produce unequal justice for victims as well as offenders. Racial disparities in prosecuting and sentencing reflect disparities in criminal offending. In Los Angeles, blacks are 21 times as likely as whites to commit a violent crime, 36 times as likely to commit a robbery, and 57 times as likely to commit a homicide, according to police department data

Blacks in Los Angeles are 17 times as likely to be homicide victims as whites; statewide, the disparity is 13 times.