Opinion ID: 1025139
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Deardra Holder

Text: The State exercised a peremptory strike on Deardra Holder, a 22-year-old African-American female, at a time when six jurors, including one African-American, were seated on the jury and the State had used nine peremptory challenges. Of those nine challenges, three were made to strike African-Americans. During voir dire, the State discovered that Holder had an 18 year-old sister who lived in the same household and worked at the same business as she did. When asked for her views regarding the death penalty, Holder responded, after pausing for a moment, that [i]f the death penalty was appropriate, I would see nothing wrong with it. (J.A. at 409.) Most of Holder's answers were either Yes, ma'am or No, ma'am. (J.A. at 401-420.) The State exercised a peremptory challenge against Holder for three reasons: (1) she was 22 and had a sister who was 18 and lived in the same household that she did; (2) she paused before discussing the death penalty; and (3) when the prosecutor attempted to draw her out and to engage her in more than one-word answers or simply short-phrased answers, she was unable or unwilling to do so. (J.A. at 422.) The trial court granted the peremptory strike and denied the Batson challenge because the articulated reason that the juror was relatively young and close to the age range of the defendants and that the juror had a sibling at approximately the age range of the defendants constitutes an articulable race-neutral reason for exercising a peremptory challenge. (J.A. at 427.) In reviewing this claim, the Supreme Court of North Carolina concluded that the State met its burden to offer a race-neutral reason for the strike: As to the second prong of Batson, the State provided race-neutral reasons for the peremptory challenges of both Holder and Murray. With regard to Holder, we perceive no inherent discriminatory intent in the State's explanation that Holder was young, within the age range of defendants, and had a sister who was also within the age range of defendants. Defendants have failed to show the State's reasoning was pretextual. The State relied on previous questions by defense counsel to formulate what it believed to be the defense theory in this case and then proceeded to ask questions similar to those asked by defense counsel. There was no evidence of pretext, as the State sought to exclude Holder because she might be able to empathize with defendants because she and her sister were within the same age range as defendants. Therefore, the trial court did not err in concluding that the State's reasoning was race-neutral. Golphin, 533 S.E.2d at 214 (citations omitted). In contending that the State's proffered race-neutral reasons were actually pretextual, Tilmon directs our attention to two white jurors the State did not strike, Dennis Grice and Dana Phillips, who Tilmon contends were in the same age range as Deardra Holder and had siblings in a similar age range. Grice was, according to his juror questionnaire, 23 years old and lived at home with a 13-year-old brother. Phillips was 21 years old and had a 29-year-old sister. There is no evidence in the record regarding their living arrangements at the time of trial.