Opinion ID: 1493819
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Mixed Motives and Batson

Text: The Constitution prohibits purposeful discrimination on the basis of race or gender in the exercise of peremptory challenges to prospective jurors. Batson, 476 U.S. at 88, 106 S.Ct. 1712 (race); J.E.B., 511 U.S. at 129, 146, 114 S.Ct. at 1419 (gender). [7] The discriminatory exclusion of even a single juror is objectionable. ( Leon) Robinson v. United States, 878 A.2d 1273, 1282 n. 18 (D.C.2005) (citing J.E.B., 511 U.S. at 142, 114 S.Ct. 1419, and Little, supra footnote 5, 613 A.2d at 885-86). Preserved claims of unconstitutional discrimination in jury selection are not subject to harmless error analysis; the erroneous rejection of a Batson challenge [8] results in a structural defect that infects [t]he entire conduct of the trial from beginning to end, Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 309, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991), and hence is per se reversible. See, e.g., Tankleff v. Senkowski, 135 F.3d 235, 248 (2d Cir.1998); accord, Card v. United States, 776 A.2d 581, 586 n. 3 (D.C.2001) (citing cases), vacated upon stipulation of dismissal of appeal, 863 A.2d 821 (D.C.2004) (en banc). Robinson charged the prosecution with striking Juror 627 for a combination of three reasons: the juror's race, his gender and his age. Although Robinson does not dispute that age-based peremptory strikes are constitutionally permissible, Baxter, 640 A.2d at 718 n. 5, he argues that the strike nonetheless was infirm because it was motivated in part by the impermissible considerations of race and gender. Past Batson cases in this court mostly have presented uncomplicated, single-motivation claims that potential jurors were excluded solely on account of their race or their gender. Recently, in (Leon) Robinson, we confronted a mixed motivation claim that black female jurors specifically were targeted for exclusion because of their race and their gender. Neither race nor gender alone was sufficient to explain the strikes in (Leon) Robinson, but the two factors in combination did appear sufficient to do so. We held that, just like peremptory strikes motivated by racial or gender bias alone, strikes motivated by those two impermissible reasons in combination are unconstitutional and subject to Batson challenge. 878 A.2d at 1285. The mixed motivation issue that this court has not previously decided is whether a peremptory strike that is only partially motivated by impermissible bias (racial and/or gender in nature) is also subject to Batson challenge. [9] But if, for this court, that precise issue is one of first impression, then logic, common sense, and the decisions of numerous other courts leave us in little doubt as to its proper resolution. As a matter of logic and common sense, who would deny that a policy of, say, striking young black jurors while permitting young white jurors to serve would be racially discriminatory? To justify such strikes as solely age-based would be transparently pretextual, even if the strikes were age-based in part. And [i]n the realm of constitutional law, whenever challenged action would be unlawful if improperly motivated, the Supreme Court has made it clear that the challenged action is invalid if motivated in part by an impermissible reason.... Howard v. Senkowski, 986 F.2d 24, 26 (2d Cir.1993). Because no sound reason exists to treat Batson challenges differently from other equal protection challenges that are subject to mixed motivation analysis, the Second Circuit in Howard and subsequently other courts considering the question uniformly have held that  Batson challenges may be brought by defendants who can show that racial [or gender] discrimination was a substantial part of the motivation for a prosecutor's peremptory challenges. Id. at 30. [10] This court unequivocally embraced that proposition when it decided the narrower issue presented in (Leon) Robinson. To prove a Batson violation, the court said, a defendant need not show that a prosecutor's strikes were motivated solely by racial or gender bias, to the exclusion of all other considerations. Such a requirement would render Batson a virtual nullity and divorce it from the real world of jury selection, for the motivations behind peremptory strikes are seldom so crystallized and singular. Mixed motives are the norm. However, even if the prosecutor acted from mixed motives, some of which were non-discriminatory, his actions deny equal protection and violate Batson if race or gender influenced his decision. A peremptory challenge may not be based even partially on an unlawful discriminatory reason. 878 A.2d at 1284 (citations omitted). We do not understand the government to be contesting these elementary principles. [11] We now hold that even where the exclusion of a potential juror is motivated in substantial part by constitutionally permissible factors (such as the juror's age), the exclusion is a denial of equal protection and a Batson violation if it is partially motivated as well by the juror's race or gender. Accordingly, we hold that appellant Robinson raised a cognizable Batson challenge when he charged the prosecutor with purposefully striking Juror 627 because he was a young black male. If the prosecutor in fact was influenced by Juror 627's race or gender, the strike was unlawful even if the juror's youth, a legitimate consideration under current law, was the predominant factor in the prosecutor's calculus. [12]