The Court of Appeal holds there was no error in denying defendant’s RJA motion without prejudice. The motion requested dismissal of the felony-murder special circumstance (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17)) on
grounds of its racially disparate application. “With utmost respect for the plausibility of
his legal theory”, the court found the report on which the claim relied to be “logically infirm” and found it omitted necessary and available information. For a statistics-based challenge, the court “would expect at least as a starting point a reasoned examination of (1) those defendants who were charged with murder in the relevant period and region, (2) the subset of those charged with murder who were also charged with a special circumstance, and (3) the racial makeup of both the murder group and the special circumstance subgroup, as compared with the general population.”

The full opinion is available on the court’s website here: https://www4.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/H049356.PDF