The Racial Justice Act (RJA) does not authorize a freestanding motion for discovery; it only authorizes discovery in a pending proceeding under section 745 (a).  The RJA did not create an exception to the general rule that there is no statutory authority for a trial court to entertain a postjudgment motion that is unrelated to any proceeding then pending before the court. The trial court’s denial of the discovery motion was therefore not an appealable order, because the trial court had properly summarily denied defendant’s related petition for writ of habeas corpus for failure to state a prima facie case. [Editor’s Note: J. Kelety concurred, and would have found that the RJA does authorize a freestanding motion for discovery, but would have dismissed as the discovery denial was not an independently appealable order.]

The full opinion is available on the court’s website here:  https://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/D083970.PDF