Opinion ID: 848572
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the trial court's failure to follow the batson procedures

Text: The judge failed to follow the three-step procedure required by Batson. In fact, he failed to complete a single step of the procedure. He did not make a finding regarding whether there had been a prima facie showing of purposeful discrimination. Instead, it appears that he lumped all three steps into one and made his ruling without further regard to Batson. Trial judges are not at liberty to disregard the Batson procedure. Batson is United States Supreme Court precedent that is binding on state courts. Moreover, the courts may neither ignore one step nor combine the three steps of Batson. Purkett v. Elem, 514 U.S. 765, 768, 115 S.Ct. 1769, 131 L.Ed.2d 834 (1995). Instead, they must carefully and individually consider each. The Batson procedure was designed to carefully balance the free exercise of peremptory challenges and the evils of racial discrimination in the selection of jurors. Batson, supra at 98-99, 106 S.Ct. 1712. It was crafted specifically to enforce the mandate of equal protection as well as to further the ends of justice. Id. at 99, 106 S.Ct. 1712. In this case, when the trial judge allowed defense counsel to speak, he erroneously placed the burden on counsel to show that the peremptory challenge should not be disallowed. Although Batson provides a burden-shifting procedure, the party objecting to a peremptory challenge, in this case the prosecutor, has the ultimate burden of proving purposeful discrimination. Purkett, supra at 768, 115 S.Ct. 1769. Improperly shifting the burden violates the principle that the ultimate burden of persuasion regarding racial motivation rests with, and never shifts from, the opponent of the strike. Id. Therefore, the trial court erred twice in disallowing the peremptory challenges to Jurors No. 5 and No. 10. The trial court was required to make a ruling on the first step. The court's failure to arrive at a clear conclusion and articulate its findings amounted to error in and of itself. Only if, and when, a trial court concludes that a prima facie case exists does the burden shift to the party exercising the peremptory challenge. Then the trial court must allow that party to articulate race-neutral reasons for the challenge. In this case, the trial court glossed over the first step, skipped the second step, and jumped to the third. At the third step, the court impermissibly placed on defendant the burden to rebut presumed racial prejudice. These multiple and repeated errors are patently inconsistent with the established Batson precedent. They cannot remain uncorrected. Those on the lead opinion state that their research [3] reflects that trial courts often fail to comply with Batson. They appear to believe that, because there is a supposed generalized failure of compliance, the seriousness of the trial court's Batson errors here is diminished. But an error often repeated is no less an error. In fact, what we should draw from their research is that we must more scrupulously hold our courts responsible for following Batson. The United States Supreme Court has carefully laid out the steps necessary for determining if a Batson error exists. It is for us to see that they are followed.