Filed 7/8/26 P. v. White CA2/8
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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION EIGHT
THE PEOPLE, B335969
Plaintiff and Respondent, Los Angeles County
Super. Ct. No. SA102931
v.
TYLON DESHAWN WHITE,
Defendant and Appellant.
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los
Angeles County, Joseph J. Burghardt, Judge. Affirmed with
corrections.
Edward H. Schulman, under appointment by the Court of
Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Charles C. Ragland, Chief
Assistant Attorney General, Susan Sullivan Pithey, Assistant
Attorney General, Idan Ivri and Roberta L. Davis, Deputy
Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
____________________
The jury selection in this murder case complied with the
recent statute that imposed new restrictions on voir dire. We
affirm and order correction of the abstract of judgment.
Statutory citations are to the Code of Civil Procedure.
A jury convicted Tylon Deshawn White of first degree
murder and a gun charge. White challenges only the exclusion of
three women from his jury.
White’s 2023 trial featured video evidence and testimony
from an eyewitness who saw White and others beat a man to the
ground outside a house party. The witness watched White then
shoot the man to death.
The disputed issues in this appeal all concern jury
selection. The prosecution struck several women during voir
dire, and White claims the court should have sustained his
objections to three of them under section 231.7.
The Legislature recently enacted this provision to curb
improper removals of jurors based on membership in a protected
group like race or gender. Section 231.7 establishes new
procedures for identifying unlawful discrimination and implicit
bias with peremptory challenges. (§ 231.7, subd. (a); People v.
Garcia (2025) 115 Cal.App.5th 92, 102.)
Subdivision (d) of the statute lists factors a court may
consider in ruling on an objection to a peremptory challenge.
(§ 231.7, subds. (b) & (d)(3).) One of these factors is “[w]hether
the reason given by the party exercising the peremptory
challenge was contrary to or unsupported by the record.”
(§ 231.7, subd. (d)(3)(F).) The statute also lists reasons that are
presumptively invalid. (§ 231.7, subds. (e) & (g)).) None is at
issue here.
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After evaluating the reasons “actually given” and the
totality of the circumstances, the trial court must decide whether
there is a substantial likelihood that an objectively reasonable
person would view a protected category like gender as a factor in
the challenge. The court must explain its reasoning on the
record. (See § 231.7, subds. (c) & (d)(1).)
We review the trial court’s ruling independently but its
express factual findings deferentially for substantial evidence.
We may not impute findings to the trial court or speculate about
other possible justifications for a peremptory challenge. (§ 231.7,
subds. (d)(1) & (j).)
The trial court and counsel obeyed the statutory procedure.
Defense counsel objected and invoked section 231.7 after
the prosecutor used his sixth peremptory challenge. Counsel
noted five of the six prospective jurors were women, there was a
pattern, and gender is a protected class under the statute.
Outside of the panel’s presence, the court asked for the
prosecutor’s reasons for the challenges and the prosecutor gave
them. The court considered these reasons, defense counsel’s
response, and the totality of the circumstances and overruled the
defense objection. The court explained its reasoning using the
statutory factors and noted other points that supported the
prosecutor’s decisionmaking:
1. The prosecutor twice accepted a jury panel that was
evenly split between males and females.
2. Defendant White, the victim, and the eyewitness
were males.
3. Gender did not bear on the facts of the case.
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4. The prosecutor made eight challenges for cause, and
all of these jurors were men, whereas the defense
challenged two women for cause.
5. The prosecutor used his first peremptory challenge on
a male.
6. The questioning of prospective jurors had not been
cursory.
7. The record supported the reasons given for excusing
these prospective jurors.
8. The stated justifications were neither presumptively
invalid nor disproportionately associated with
gender. (See § 231.7, subds. (b)–(d).)
White does not challenge most aspects of this ruling. His
claim is narrow: that the record does not support the reasons the
prosecutor gave for excusing the three women at issue — Juror
Numbers 9916, 0356, and 1057 — and instead shows the jurors’
answers were appropriate.
White’s claim is mistaken. The gender-neutral reasons the
prosecutor gave were grounded in the record. They were also
sensible.
The prosecutor based these peremptory challenges on the
jurors’ answers to questions about circumstantial evidence. One
challenge also hinged on the juror’s family connection to a
criminal defense lawyer. The record supports these grounds. We
address each juror in turn.
I
Regarding Juror Number 9916, the prosecutor said he
found her responses to a hypothetical concerning circumstantial
evidence to be unreasonable.
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Defense counsel described an imaginary scenario involving
a cat and a mouse in a box. After modifying the hypothetical, she
asked various jurors whether the cat was guilty — meaning the
cat ate the mouse. She explained that, when the evidence gives
rise to reasonable conclusions that differ, the law required them
to select the one pointing to innocence — meaning the mouse
escaped.
White’s attorney had Juror Number 9916 assume there was
a mouse-sized hole in the box, but after opening the box the juror
found the cat covered in blood and only the mouse’s bloody tail
inside. Juror Number 9916 asked if there was more evidence to
consider and was told no. Then she said there would be doubt the
cat ate the mouse.
This answer startled the defense attorney: “There’s doubt?”
“Why? I mean he’s covered in the blood and the tail is there.
There’s a lot of evidence that he ate it. Usually grab them by the
tail first, I think.”
Despite the defense puzzlement, Juror Number 9916 stuck
with her view that it was reasonable to believe the mouse
escaped.
Later, however, the prosecutor asked this juror whether it
was reasonable to conclude the mouse got away. Now this juror
had a one word answer: “No.”
That is to say, this juror first said it was reasonable to
conclude the mouse got away, and then she said it was
unreasonable to conclude the mouse got away.
The prosecutor acted properly by striking this juror, and
the court was right to rule the statute permitted this strike. The
juror’s initial reaction to the hypothetical was doubt as to guilt,
even if she later conceded both the cat’s guilt and the mouse’s
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escape were reasonable. One other juror, number 6898, similarly
expressed an initial leaning toward acquittal. He said it was
“likely, definite possibility” the mouse got away. The prosecutor
also excused this juror with a peremptory strike. Other jurors
the prosecution retained did not make such remarks. Juror 9916
ultimately concluded her initial response had been unreasonable.
The prosecution pinpointed juror 9916’s responses to the
hypothetical as “not necessarily reasonable,” and the trial court
rightly stated the record supported the prosecutor’s justification.
This valid and straightforward logic does not support White’s
claim that the justification was pretext concealing gender
discrimination.
II
Turning to Juror Number 0356, the prosecutor
acknowledged she was a former federal prosecutor and there
might be a perception he would want prosecutors on the jury;
but he did not “necessarily feel that way” as he did not “know
necessarily what they’re bringing to the table.” He explained he
sought to exclude this juror based on her responses to another
circumstantial evidence hypothetical about a highlighter: Juror
Number 0356 equivocated on what was a reasonable explanation
for how the highlighter got from his hand to the courtroom
podium and “she kind of began to raise the possibility that there
were other things that may have happened.”
The record supports this justification.
For this hypothetical, the prosecutor held a highlighter,
and the panel watched him walk to a podium and place the
highlighter on a book there. Then the prosecutor took the
highlighter back and asked Juror Number 0356 to close her eyes
for a few seconds. When she opened her eyes, the highlighter was
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on the book. The prosecutor asked how the highlighter got there.
Juror Number 0356 suggested the prosecutor had moved it,
noting she heard steps in that direction, heard the highlighter hit
the book, and then heard the prosecutor come back. When asked
about other reasonable explanations based on the evidence, she
speculated “Ms. Melikian [defense counsel] put the highlighter
there in his pocket.” She conceded she did not hear anyone
besides the prosecutor move and did not see anyone else,
including defense counsel, with a highlighter.
The juror’s answer was a leap from the evidence. The
prosecutor pressed this point with Juror Number 0356, who
agreed she had drawn a conclusion unconnected to the evidence.
These record facts support the prosecutor’s stated
justification for excusing this juror. The prosecutor did not need
to accept Juror Number 0356’s ultimate agreement with him and
to ignore her earlier reluctance to reason from the evidence.
III
Finally, for Juror Number 1057, the prosecutor explained
this juror had a criminal defense attorney in her family who she
saw regularly. This juror also had raised her hand in response to
a question during the circumstantial evidence discussion. The
prosecutor did not elaborate further on this second ground.
The record supports both grounds.
In response to the court’s questioning, Juror Number 1057
said her cousin was a criminal defense attorney, she was “pretty
close” to this cousin, and she talks with this cousin about the
cousin’s work.
Later, when the prosecutor discussed circumstantial
evidence and drawing reasonable conclusions from evidence, he
asked the group whether anyone thought “they’re not really a
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reasonable person.” Several people raised their hands. The
prosecutor began following up row by row questioning those who
had raised their hands, but he had pivoted to other topics by the
time he reached seats 21 to 28. Juror Number 1057 was in seat
21.
White offered no argument concerning this second ground
for the prosecutor’s challenge, and nothing in the record calls it
into question.
On the first ground, White argued other jurors who were
close to defense lawyers were not stricken, implying the
prosecutor displayed bias by striking Juror Number 1057. This
argument misses the mark. What mattered to the prosecutor
was having a close familial relationship with a criminal defense
lawyer. In the first panel, Juror Number 1057 was the only one
with a criminal defense lawyer in the family.
The prosecutor was consistent on this issue. In the second
round of peremptory challenges, he struck two additional jurors
who said they were related to a criminal defense attorney or to a
lawyer who had done criminal defense work. The prosecutor also
challenged another one of these jurors for cause. White ignores
these facts.
The trial court found the record supported the reasons the
prosecutor gave for his peremptory challenges. This ruling was
correct. White has not shown the court erred in overruling
White’s section 231.7 objection.
*****
In its response brief, the prosecution says the abstract of
judgment must be corrected to include the prison term for White’s
firearm enhancement under Penal Code section 12022.5,
subdivision (a).
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The jury found true the firearm allegation. The trial court
declined to strike this enhancement and selected the low term of
three years for it. The reporter’s transcript shows the court
imposed this term at the sentencing hearing, making White’s
total sentence three years plus 75 years to life. However, the
abstract of judgment omits both the enhancement and the related
determinate prison term.
The prosecution established the abstract of judgment
should be corrected. White appears to concede the error by not
replying to this point.
DISPOSITION
We direct the trial court to prepare an amended abstract of
judgment that includes the three-year prison term for the firearm
enhancement and reflects an aggregate sentence of three years
plus 75 years to life. The court must forward the amended
document to the Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation. We otherwise affirm the judgment.
WILEY, J.
We concur:
STRATTON, P. J.
SCHERB, J.
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