Did you see the new california law trying to eliminate 'unconscious bias'? Gonna make voir dire a lot more interesting.
Oh my god, funny story.
At a jury trial, the judge asked both attorneys to stand up and recognize particular jury pool members (this was outside the presence of the jury) that we might be, or could be, subjected to such "unconscious bias" . In other words, the judge asked each attorney (one of which was me) to identify minorities i might be subjectively discriminating against! LOL
I said i had no information to provide and that i was not seeing any juror in a racial context at all. I said the only thing i was examining was their answers to questions. I said, first, i don't know who is a minority and who is not. I gave the example that i had minority blood in my DNA but someone may or may not know that by appearance. I said that trying to determine if someone was a minority--i had a problem with in the first place. Not only would i not do it, but i don't think it could be accurately done. The other attorney followed my lead, as neither of us were going to create an issue on appeal admitting we might have "unconscious bias" towards any juror.
The judge was ticked. LOL.
She said she was not being racist by asking us to identify minority jury pool members, if that was what i was implying. I said i was not implying anything, just that i did not have the ability, motive, or desire to care anything about the jurors except their answers to questions. Which was the truth. I could careless a person's ethnicity and take offense to anyone suggesting i have subjective unbconsias bias. The whole notion is ridiculous BS and make work for people selling CLE's on it.
Anyway, the judge then identified minority jury members herself. LOL. I was stunned. She was like juror # blah, blah, appears to be a miniority, etc. She then asked us if either attorney thought those jurors were subjected to unconscious bias during voir dire. Both attorneys just said "no."
It was really awkward and the whole affair was ridiculous.
