Div. Five of the First District Court of Appeal held Friday that the conviction of a man accused of contacting a minor for lewd purposes, after a law enforcement child predator sting revealed sexual messages he sent to a police officer posing as a 13-year-old girl, must be reversed due to a trial judge failing to provide any reasoning when denying a defense objection to the prosecutor’s exercise of a peremptory challenge based on the Racial Justice Act.

California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin H. Liu has written a concurring statement to the high court’s denial of a petition for review in a case in which Div. Five of this district’s Court of Appeal held that 2022 amendments to the Penal Code, which favor the imposition of a midterm sentence and provide that an “enhancement” cannot be used to both add time and justify imposition of a high term, do not have any effect on the Three Strikes sentencing scheme.

Parties on both sides of a long-running debate over the California Public Utilities Commission’s controversial overhaul of rooftop solar regulations are anxiously awaiting a ruling from the state’s court of appeals. Depending on what conclusion the justices reach, the decision may alter the rate of compensation that at least some of the roughly 2 million Californians with solar installations on their homes and businesses receive when their systems generate excess electricity.

It’s been 3½ months since Justice Martin Jenkins retired from the California Supreme Court, and more than four months since he announced his retirement. While a parade of state appeals court justices act as temporary replacements, Gov. Gavin Newsom, who appointed Jenkins, the court’s first openly gay justice, in October 2020, has not yet chosen his successor.