Local students will have the chance to question California Supreme Court members about the state’s judicial system before Wednesday’s special session of the court in Monterey, the first time the court has met in the city in more than 45 years. The special session will be held at Colton Hall Museum – the location of California’s first constitutional convention in 1849.

Div. Six of this district’s Court of Appeal yesterday held that a trial judge may overrule an objection asserting that the prosecutor has exercised a peremptory challenge based on a presumptively invalid, racially motivated reason without making explicit findings referencing the governing statutory language, disapproving a 2024 opinion by the same division that reached the opposite conclusion.

A prosecutor’s closing argument, in which he said that the circumstances of the case “broke my heart,” asked the jury to “do justice,” and likened the crime to a “Hollywood slasher movie,” did not mandate reversal of the defendant’s attempted murder conviction relating to a domestic violence incident in which the accused stabbed his then-girlfriend with a broken bottle, Div. Five of this district’s Court of Appeal has held.

(Subscription required) Bradley's mother, the late Elizabeth Franco Bradley, shaped her path and her philosophy. She said her mother was known in the San Diego city attorney's office as "Killer Bradley" for her relentless trial schedule. She later built a civil practice where her daughter worked before and after law school.