The underlying prosecution involves Russell Austin, charged in 2018 with the special-circumstance murder of Erica Johnson. Austin filed a claim under the Racial Justice Act of 2020, arguing the Riverside County District Attorney's Office charges Black defendants with special circumstances and seeks the death penalty more frequently than similarly situated White defendants. He supported the claim with statistical data on homicide filings from 2006 through 2019.
After the matter was assigned to Judge Shouka, prosecutors moved to disqualify her, arguing she was too close to the institutional charging practices under scrutiny. The appellate panel agreed, granting the People's writ petition and directing the superior court to enter a new order disqualifying her.
Acting Presiding Justice Miller wrote that Austin's RJA claims placed the DAO's systemic charging decisions squarely at issue. "Her role was more than just following 'office policy'; she was directly involved in making charging decisions," Miller wrote.
The court drew a line between a former prosecutor who handled routine cases and one who helped shape the charging culture now under examination. Citing a formal opinion from the California Supreme Court Committee on Judicial Ethics Opinions, the panel noted the committee had warned the result might differ for a judge who participated in developing or directing the district attorney's policy regarding charging.
Judge Shouka fell in that category, the court found. She attended staffing meetings where homicide charging decisions were made and made filing recommendations in murder cases. Her former supervisor described the homicide unit as "highly collaborative."
The disqualification fight began when the district attorney filed an amended statement of disqualification on July 1, 2025, invoking Code of Civil Procedure section 170.1. Judge Jeffrey B. Jones, assigned to decide the motion, denied it on August 12, 2025, concluding the People had offered only conclusory statements and had identified no specific disputed facts about which Judge Shouka had personal knowledge. He wrote that the People's contentions were "not logically related to the impartiality of Judge Shouka."
The appellate court disagreed. It held the relevant question was not whether Judge Shouka worked on Austin's case or the precise comparison cases, but whether the RJA hearing would require examination of the DAO's broader charging culture during a period when she was an active participant.
"While we do not find that Judge Shouka was actually biased in this case," Miller wrote, the appearance standard under section 170.1 requires only that a person aware of the facts "might" reasonably entertain a doubt.
Justices Codrington and Menetrez joined the opinion. The panel emphasized that its ruling does not require recusal of every former prosecutor hearing an RJA claim. Each case should turn on its own facts and circumstances, the court said, and the dispositive factor here was a record developed enough to show Judge Shouka may have been personally involved in cases that will be examined at the evidentiary hearing.