SAN JOSE, Calif. -- When a defense attorney in a 2008 rape trial challenged a Santa Clara County prosecutor for dismissing all the prospective Vietnamese jurors, the prosecutor offered explanations the judge accepted as race-neutral.
Now, however, an appellate court has published a rare opinion, finding that in the criminal case involving both a Vietnamese victim and defendant, the prosecutor improperly dismissed one of the three Vietnamese people in the jury pool solely because he was Vietnamese.
