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People v. Leung4/9/1992
triction of voir dire in support of peremptory challenges does not violate the United States Constitution. The court's application of a Watson rather than a Chapman standard for addressing the harmfulness of the error presumes that the error was a violation of state law. Furthermore, the state law basis for the error found in Williams was not constitutional but, instead, of legislative creation. In reaching its holding, Williams expressly relied on legislative pronouncements of a "commitment" to broad voir dire examination. (29 Cal. 3d at pp. 399-400,
408-409.) Since the decision in Williams was based on the then existing statutory scheme, little vitality remains in its holding after the voters' enactment of an entirely new statutory scheme in Proposition 115. Code of Civil Procedure section 223, the statute herein challenged, statutorily overrules Williams. Williams, not being based on the state or federal Constitution, cannot survive the voters' statutory disavowment of its holding. Accordingly, Code of Civil Procedure section 223 is itself valid unless it violates the equal protection guarantees of the state and federal constitutions.
2. No Equal Protection Violation
The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution denies states "the power to legislate that different treatment be accorded to persons placed by a statute into different classes on the basis of criteria wholly unrelated to the objective of that statute." (Reed v. Reed (1971) 404 U.S. 71, 75-76 [30 L.Ed.2d 225, 229, 92 S.Ct. 251].) The equal protection guarantee of article I, section 7 of the California Constitution, while substantially similar to that of the Fourteenth Amendment, has independent meaning and may, in some cases, provide broader rights than those granted by the federal Constitution. (Serrano v. Priest (1976) 18 Cal. 3d 728, 764-765 [135 Cal. Rptr. 345, 557 P.2d 929].)
"The first prerequisite to a meritorious claim under the equal protection clause is a showing that the state has adopted a classification that affects two or more similarly situated groups in an unequal manner." (In re Eric J. (1979) 25 Cal. 3d 522, 530 [159 Cal. Rptr. 317, 601 P.2d 549].) " 'To ask whether two groups are similarly situated in this context ... is the same as asking whether the distinction between them can be justified under the appropriate test of equal protection.' " (Laupheimer v. State of California (1988) 200 Cal. App. 3d 440, 457 [246 Cal. Rptr. 82], quoting Fullerton Joint Union High School Dist. v. State Bd. of Education (1982) 32 Cal. 3d 779, 798 fn. 19 [187 Cal. Rptr. 398, 654 P.2d 168].)
The first step in analyzing any equal protection claim is to determine the applicable standard of scrutiny. Where the right affected by the classification is not constitutionally protected, the classification need only be rationally related to a legitimate state purpose in order to withstand equal protection scrutiny. (Lucas v. Superior Court (1988) 203 Cal. App. 3d 733, 738 [250 Cal. Rptr. 76].) As discussed above, the right to voir dire in support of peremptory challenges and the right to exercise peremptory challenges are not constitutionally protected but are only statutory creations. Consequently, the relevant standard of scrutiny is rational basis.
Code of
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