Opinion ID: 765047
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Burdens of Production and Persuasion are Distinct

Text: The majority offers a careful review of the standards applicable to mixed questions of law and fact, acknowledging, however, that this approach provides no clear-cut answer. Indeed, our holding in Gay casts doubt on the appropriateness of the majority's reliance on such labeling. In Gay, we recognized that the trial court might make factual findings, but characterized as legal the Conclusion whether to shift the burden of production. In addition, the majority's approach of simply labeling the Batson prima facie inquiry a mixed issue of law and fact only begs the question and blurs the distinction between shifting the burden of production and satisfying the burden of persuasion, i.e., deciding the ultimate issue of discrimination. As Gay recognized, raising an inference of discrimination sufficient to require the other side to articulate a neutral explanation cannot be equated with the ultimate factual finding of purposeful discrimination. Unlike the majority, I do not find Salve Regina College v. Russell, 499 U.S. 225 (1991), particularly instructive. Salve Regina involved the issue whether a district court's interpretation of state law is entitled to deference on appeal. See id. at 226. The Court concluded that appellate courts are more structurally suited to determine legal issues and that the appropriate standard of review is de novo. See id. at 231-32. Although the Court referred in passing to a district court's potentially better position to evaluate mixed questions of law and fact, the Court was not in that case confronted with a constitutional right or the complexities associated with the shifting of burdens between parties. Moreover, United States v. McConney, 728 F.2d 1195 (9th Cir. 1984) (en banc), on which the majority relies in its labeling approach, actually supports de novo review. In McConney, we observed that de novo review is favored when the mixed question implicates constitutional rights. Id. at 1203. Not only does the Batson prima facie challenge involve constitutional concerns, it also presents the sort of situation that McConney recognized as calling for de novo review. Taken together, the three elements of the Batson prima facie case require[ ] us to consider legal concepts in the mix of fact and law and to exercise judgment about the values that animate legal principles. Id. at 1202. Hence, the concerns of judicial administration... favor the appellate court, and the question should be classified as one of law and reviewed de novo. Id. Seeking a solution through labels is not the answer. Instead, I believe that a careful study of Batson and Hernandez supports de novo review of the prima facie determination. In Batson, the Court's purpose was to remove the crippling burden of proof placed on defendants by lower courts' interpretation of the decision in Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202 (1965). See Batson, 476 U.S. at 92. The Court rejected the then prevailing evidentiary requirement that the defendant show a pattern of striking African-Americans from the jury in a number of past cases. See id. at 92-93. Instead, the Court held that the defendant's burden is specific to the case at hand. See id. at 95-96. In light of its concern that the evidentiary standards of the day had rendered prosecutors' peremptory challenges... largely immune from constitutional scrutiny, id. at 92-93, the Court could not have intended in Batson to institute in their place an equally onerous evidentiary burden. Thus, I do not believe, as the majority suggests, that the Court envisioned that the prima facie stage is primarily a factual inquiry. Rather, this type of intense factual inquiry  is reserved for the final stage, when the trial court has the duty to determine if the defendant has established purposeful discrimination. Id. at 98. By treating the threshold determination as a primarily factual one, the majority ignores the very important second prong of the Batson inquiry. If the circumstances raise an inference that the intent in striking venire members was discriminatory, Batson still requires that the prosecutor articulate for the record the reasons for the challenge. The trial Judge's guess or speculation as to the prosecutor's reasons should not be used as a substitute for the actual motive, and the requirement that the prosecutor state a neutral explanation should not be circumvented by collapsing the prima facie and final prongs of Batson into a single inquiry. In concluding that the trial court's ruling on the ultimate question of intentional discrimination renders moot the pre liminary issue whether the defendant made a prima facie showing, and that an appellate court's review on such record is only for clear error, the Court in Hernandez confirmed the distinction between the prima facie and final prongs of the Batson inquiry. See Hernandez, 500 U.S. at 359, 364-69 (plurality); id. at 372 (O'Connor, J., Concurring). As explained in Hernandez: In the typical peremptory challenge inquiry, the decisive question will be whether counsel's race-neutral explanation for a peremptory challenge should be believed. There will seldom be much evidence bearing on that issue, and the best evidence often will be the demeanor of the attorney who exercises the challenge.... [E]valuation of the prosecutor's state of mind based on demeanor and credibility lies 'peculiarly within a trial Judge's province.' Id. at 365, 111 S.Ct. 1859. In so characterizing the Batson analysis, the Court made clear that the trial court's factual inquiry and weighing of the prosecutor's credibility should occur after, not before, the prosecutor has offered a neutral explanation. See also Purkett v. Elem, 514 U.S. 765, 768-69 (1995) (distinguishing between impermissibly discounting the prosecutor's reasons as silly or superstitious at stage two of the Batson inquiry and determining at stage three whether the defendant has carried the burden of proving purposeful discrimination in light of the stated reasons, which the trial court may choose to disbelieve).