Opinion ID: 746262
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Discriminatory Jury Selection

Text: 8 The first issue raised by Dr. Koo is whether the state trial court's decision to reinstate two female jurors who were struck by the petitioner constituted a due process violation under the Fourteenth Amendment pursuant to Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). The trial court found that a discriminatory pattern existed and that the peremptory challenges of two female venirepersons had been made with discriminatory intent. Reviewing the trial court's denial of the peremptory challenges, the state appellate court agreed that Dr. Koo's reasons for challenging the prospective female jurors were not facially neutral and concluded that no error had occurred. The state appellate court also found no error in the trial court's remedy. It rejected Dr. Koo's claim that the trial court should have either reinstated all of the improperly struck jurors, or declared a mistrial, discharged the entire panel, and chosen a panel free from any taint. 640 N.E.2d at 100. The state appeals court then held: Clearly the remedy which a particular trial court employs upon a finding of purposeful discrimination is a matter left to the court's discretion. Id. The district court reviewing Dr. Koo's habeas petition was asked to consider only the state trial court's remedy. It noted that the state court had reinstated both the two female jurors struck by the petitioner and also the one male juror struck by the prosecution. Acknowledging that in Batson the Supreme Court accorded discretion to trial court judges in remedying Batson situations when they arose, the district court concluded that the state court's remedy was neither an abuse of discretion nor a violation of petitioner's due process rights.
9 We follow the pre-AEDPA standard for reviewing Dr. Koo's contention that gender-based peremptory challenges violated the rule of Batson. Prior to the amendment, federal courts disregarded state courts' legal conclusions and reached independent judgments on the issues presented them, McCain v. Gramley, 96 F.3d 288, 289 (7th Cir.1996), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 1320, 137 L.Ed.2d 482 (1997), but gave deference to the state courts' findings of fact, Sumner v. Mata, 455 U.S. 591, 598, 102 S.Ct. 1303, 1307, 71 L.Ed.2d 480 (1982) (per curiam). See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) (pre-AEDPA). We note first that the state trial court found that both sides had demonstrated discriminatory intent to exclude venirepersons. As a remedy for the Batson violation, the trial court reinstated the three who had been peremptorily excused on the basis of gender, two female jurors struck by the petitioner and one male juror struck by the prosecution. Dr. Koo does not challenge the findings of the state or federal courts that discriminatory peremptory challenges were made. Instead, he asserts that the state court's remedy was flawed and that it should have discharged the entire jury panel and selected a new panel. 10 Discriminatory peremptory challenges to eliminate potential jurors have been held to violate the constitutional right to equal protection. When the discriminatory jury selection is based on race, Batson forbids it; when it is based on gender, J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., 511 U.S. 127, 114 S.Ct. 1419, 128 L.Ed.2d 89 (1994), which broadened the rule in Batson, forbids it. In this case, Dr. Koo challenges only the remedy. In fashioning a remedy for any constitutional violation, a court ought to take as its touchstone the basic proposition that the nature of the remedy must be determined by the nature and the scope of the constitutional violation. See Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S. 267, 280, 97 S.Ct. 2749, 2757, 53 L.Ed.2d 745 (1977). It is also necessary to take into account the practicalities of the situation. In this regard, we are guided by the Supreme Court's statement in Batson concerning a trial court's choice of remedy for discriminatory use of peremptory challenges. The Court wrote: 11 In light of the variety of jury selection practices followed in our state and federal trial courts, we make no attempt to instruct these courts how best to implement our holding today. For the same reason, we express no view on whether it is more appropriate in a particular case ... for the trial court to discharge the venire and select a new jury from a panel not previously associated with the case, or to disallow the discriminatory challenges and resume selection with the improperly challenged jurors reinstated on the venire. 12 Batson, 476 U.S. at 99 n. 24, 106 S.Ct. at 1725 n. 24 (citations omitted). Through this discussion, the Supreme Court has made it clear that the fashioning of a remedy is a matter upon which state courts are to be accorded significant latitude. The state court of appeals, far more familiar than we with the customs of the Indiana trial bench in selecting a jury, thought that the trial court had acted within its discretion in fashioning the remedy it did. We are not inclined, on the basis of our independent examination of the trial record, to say that the remedy chosen was not appropriate. By its very nature, Batson-type discrimination is detected only after the trial judge has perceived a pattern of discrimination develop in the peremptory challenges. The error is remediable in any one of a number of ways. Challenges found to be abusive may be disallowed; if this is not feasible because the challenged jurors have already been released, additional jurors might be called to the venire and additional challenges granted to the defendant; or in cases where those remedies are insufficient, the jury selection might begin anew with a fresh panel. McCrory v. Henderson, 82 F.3d 1243, 1247 (2d Cir.1996). Here, the state trial judge took the view that denying the pending peremptory challenges at the time the pattern was discerned sufficiently purged the jury of gender-based discrimination. Our own examination of the record brings us to the conclusion that this approach was a permissible one.