Opinion ID: 1697230
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: WHETHER TRIAL COUNSEL WAS INEFFECTIVE FOR FAILING TO PRESERVE ISSUES RELATED TO BATSON v. KENTUCKY.

Text: ¶ 36. Smith's jury was composed of nine white members and three black females. He claims that the jury selection process violated Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), and that his attorneys were ineffective in failing to preserve for the record all of the jury selection process. Smith raised the Batson issue in his direct appeal. Smith, 729 So.2d at 1201-02. There, this Court found that three black jurors had served on Smith's jury, that the State still had peremptory challenges available when those three were placed on the jury, and that Smith had waived the issue by not objecting to the composition of the jury during the selection process. Id. ¶ 37. Smith asserts that his lawyers should have challenged the State's use of its peremptory strikes and were ineffective in failing to do so. However, counsel is presumed to be competent, and if counsel is reasonably effective in the defense of an accused, he or she meets constitutional standards, irrespective of the client's evaluation of his performance. Johnson v. State, 476 So.2d 1195, 1204 (Miss.1985). Jury selection is generally a matter of trial strategy, and an attorney's decision not to make a Batson challenge does not amount to ineffective assistance of counsel absent a showing of prejudice to the defendant. See Burns v. State, 813 So.2d 668, 676 (Miss.2002). Smith simply has not shown any prejudice. For the first time, he asserts a theoretical and statistical claim, and quotes from general research done for the Capital Jury Project by Marla Sandys, Ph.D., regarding the decision-making process of capital jurors. Her research concluded that [a] sentence of life was no more or no less likely with the presence of three or more African American women on the jury finding that 50% resulted in a life sentence, and 50% resulted in a death sentence. However, after reviewing the composition of Smith's jury, she was led to conclude that [i]n my opinion, had there been a single African American male on the jury, it is more likely than not that Mr. [Clyde Wendell] Smith would have received a sentence of life. This theoretical and statistical conjecture is simply not sufficient to show deficient performance resulting in prejudice. ¶ 38. Three African-Americans sat on Smith's jury. The defense attorneys could well have thought that the State had adequate race neutral reasons for the State's strikes and the defense attorneys could have based their decision not to make a Batson motion on their belief that such a motion would have been without merit. There is no requirement that the defense make motions that the attorneys don't believe will succeed. This issue is without merit.