Racial Bias

Lloyd believes that we are far from living in a post-racial society, and that a judge must do everything possible to prevent both overt bias and implicit bias from affecting the judicial process. Lloyd’s sons are biracial and he has witnessed them being racially profiled by both police and by educators. He believes that it is important that evidence of probable cause and reasonable suspicion to detain not be based on observations that though ostensibly race neutral are essentially proxies for racial stereotypes and racial profiling. Lloyd believes that judges must ensure that neither side questions prospective jurors differently based on race, sex or sexual orientation and that claims that either side is striking jurors based on one of those immutable characteristics must be taken extremely seriously.

He believes that the Superior Court must do more to ensure that criminal juries in Los Angeles County more fully reflect a cross section of the community. In Torrance, Lloyd’s litigation in a serious case resulted in the Superior Court agreeing that going forward jurors would be summoned to that courthouse from the areas of the Southwest Judicial District in which people of color were more prevalent. In a similar case in Long Beach, Lloyd had to go all the way to the California Supreme court for an order that required the trial judge to appoint the expert whose report established that the Superior Court was systematically not summoning jurors from North Long Beach – the portion of the judicial district where most African American prospective jurors lived.   An internal study commissioned by the Superior Court years ago recommended that a similar problem in the manner jurors are summoned to the courthouses downtown exists, but the Superior Court has refused to address the issue. As a judge, I will work within the Court to urge that the Court implement the study’s recommendations.