Opinion ID: 178586
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Purposeful Discrimination

Text: In step three of the Batson inquiry, the court must decide whether the opponent of the peremptory challenge has carried his burden of proving purposeful discrimination by a preponderance of the evidence. See Batson, 476 U.S. at 98, 106 S.Ct. 1712; Cook v. LaMarque, 593 F.3d at 815 (to show purposeful discrimination at Batson 's third step the petitioner must establish that race was a substantial motivating factor). Acting prior to our decision in Cook, the district court appears to have conducted its step three analysis by asking whether race played a significant part in the decision to issue the peremptory strike, and if so whether the defendant could prove under a mixed motives analysis that the strike would have issued even if race had played no role. Cook framed the first inquiry in different terms and eliminated the second. As Cook explains, the proper analysis at Batson 's step three is whether the peremptory strike was motivated in substantial part by race. Id. If it was so motivated, the petition is to be granted regardless of whether the strike would have issued if race had played no role. Id. ([W]e reject the ... mixed-motives analysis, and limit our inquiry to whether the prosecutor was `motivated in substantial part by discriminatory intent.'). As the district court was operating under the erroneous impression that the Batson inquiry required an additional step i.e., mixed motives analysiswe remand to give the court an opportunity to apply the proper standard, as articulated in Cook. We do not foreclose the possibility that the district court could conclude on remand that its previous finding that race played a significant part in the prosecutor's decision to remove Casey was sufficient under Cook to establish a Batson violation. [6] Nonetheless, the district court did not have the benefit of Cook when it last addressed the question, and its evaluation of the significance of the race factor in the decision to strike Ms. Casey could have been informed by its understanding that there would be another analytic step focusing on the several race-neutral justifications offered. We therefore leave it to the district court to make a step three determination in the first instance, unconstrained by its prior findings under the pre- Cook standard.