In People v. Silva (2001) 25 Cal.4th 345, the defendant was being retried for the penalty phase of his capital murder case; the first penalty phase had resulted in a hung jury with seven voting in favor of death and five voting for a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. Twice during jury selection for the retrial, the prosecutor commented that the first penalty trial had hung up on racial grounds. The defense made its first Wheeler motion to dismiss the panel after the prosecutor had exercised peremptory challenges against three prospective jurors with Hispanic ancestry or surnames. The court found a prima facie case and asked the prosecutor to explain the reasons for the challenges. The court allowed the prosecutor to explain his reasons in an ex parte hearing out of the presence of defendant and defense counsel. The Supreme Court found this was error but the effect of the error was partially alleviated when the transcripts were unsealed and the defense was allowed to bring a new trial motion based on the contents of the transcripts. (People v. Silva, supra, 25 Cal.4th at pp. 384-385.)In People v. Silva (2001) the California Supreme Court's most recent analysis of the propriety of a ruling on a Wheeler/Batson motion, the court pointed out that, "although we generally 'accord great deference to the trial court's ruling that a particular race neutral reason is genuine,' we do so only when the trial court has made a sincere and reasoned attempt to evaluate each stated reason as applied to each challenged juror. When the prosecutor's stated reasons are both inherently plausible and supported by the record, the trial court need not question the prosecutor or make detailed findings. But when the prosecutor's stated reasons are either unsupported by the record, inherently implausible, or both, more is required of the trial court than a global finding that the reasons appear sufficient." ( Id. at pp. 385-386.) Because it found that the trial judge had not made a sincere and reasoned attempt to evaluate the prosecutor's explanation for challenging a single juror, and that the explanation was not supported by the record, the unanimous Silva court reversed a death sentence.