A first-of-its-kind law­suit chal­leng­ing California’s death penal­ty on sys­temic racial grounds has cleared an ini­tial hur­dle at the California Supreme Court and is now head­ed to an evi­den­tiary hear­ing in Sacramento Superior Court, accord­ing to report­ing from the Washington Post. The suit argues that California’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because of the racial dis­par­i­ties in how it operates statewide.

The Legislature last week passed a bill that would prohibit law enforcement agencies from targeting certain people under age 26 in so-called Perkins operations, which involve undercover agents posing as incarcerated people to elicit incriminating information from suspects. Ten cases are lined up at the California Supreme Court in which people targeted in Perkins operations are challenging their convictions.

Div. Eight of this district’s Court of Appeal held Friday that a judge did not abuse her discretion in awarding spousal support to a woman who had previously been convicted of domestic violence against her then-husband despite the existence of a statutory presumption against such payments, rejecting the contention that the jurist conflated the factors applicable to the appropriateness of alimony in general with the analysis relevant to rebuttal.

Div. Eight of this district’s Court of Appeal has affirmed the conviction of a man who was accused of committing a carjacking that occurred just after he crashed his own vehicle into a freeway barrier, rejecting his contention that a judge erred in failing to instruct on an “unconsciousness” defense based on witness testimony indicating that the suspect had a gash to his head, was repeating himself, and had insisted the victim’s car was his own.