On May 3, two appellate courts issued rulings on appeals of criminal convictions in which gay men in the jury pool were dismissed on “peremptory challenges” by the prosecuting attorneys. The California 3rd District Court of Appeal decided that the defendant in People v. Douglas, 2018 Cal. App. LEXIS 403, a gay man, is entitled to a new trial. The Nevada Supreme Court ruled in Morgan v. State, 2018 Nev. LEXIS 31, 134 … <Read More>
A unanimous three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today in Smithkline Beecham Corp. v. Abbott Laboratories that a new trial has to be held because Abbott, the defendant in a civil suit involving claims about the pricing of HIV medications, used one of its “peremptory challenges” to exclude a gay man from the jury. The court found that excluding people from a jury because they are gay violates the … <Read More>