Opinion ID: 1438798
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Origins and Elaboration of the Wheeler Doctrine

Text: In People v. Wheeler, 22 Cal.3d 258, 583 P.2d 748, 148 Cal. Rptr. 890 (1978), the California Supreme Court held that both the federal sixth amendment and equivalent section of the California constitution guaranteed a criminal defendant the right to trial by jury drawn from a representative cross section of the community, and that a prosecutor's systematic use of peremptory strikes to exclude members of a cognizable racial group violated that section of the California constitution. Other state courts have followed California's lead: State v. Superior Court In & for Maricopa County, 157 Ariz. 541, 760 P.2d 541 (1988); Riley v. State, 496 A.2d 997 (Del. 1985), cert. denied, 478 U.S. 1022, 106 S.Ct. 3339, 92 L.Ed.2d 743 (1986); State v. Neil, 457 So.2d 481 (Fla. 1984); Commonwealth v. Soares, 377 Mass. 461, 387 N.E.2d 499, cert. denied, 444 U.S. 881, 100 S.Ct. 170, 62 L.Ed.2d 110 (1979); State v. Gilmore, 103 N.J. 508, 511 A.2d 1150 (1986). See also, Kibler v. State, 546 So.2d 710 (Fla. 1989). The case that was cited but not applied by our court of appeals in Hall, Fields v. People, in turn adhered to the Wheeler Doctrine. In Fields, a Black defendant challenged peremptory strikes of Hispanics. The court held: [A] prosecutor's purposeful, discriminatory and systematic exercise of peremptory challenges in a given case to exclude from the jury panel Spanish-surnamed persons solely on the basis of presumed group characteristics violates the sixth amendment to the United States Constitution and article II, section 16 of the Colorado Constitution. 732 P.2d at 1155. In assessing whether such a violation had taken place, the court followed the criteria discussed in Wheeler: [T]he party may show that his opponent has struck most or all of the members of the identified group from the venire, or has used a disproportionate number of peremptories against the group. He may also demonstrate that the jurors in question share only this one characteristic  their membership in the group  and that in all other respects they are as heterogenous as the community as a whole. Next the showing may be supplemented when appropriate by such circumstances as the failure of his opponent to engage the same jurors in more than desultory voir dire, or indeed to ask them any questions at all. Lastly    the defendant need not be a member of the excluded group in order to complain of a violation of the representative cross section rule; yet if he is, and especially if in addition his alleged victim is a member of the group to which the majority of the remaining jurors belong, these facts may also be called to the court's attention. Id. at 1156 (citation omitted). The Colorado Supreme Court then applied a Batson test to determine how the trial court should have resolved any effective challenge by the defendant of the prosecutor's peremptories. This test has been thoroughly set forth by our own court of appeals in State v. Goode, 107 N.M. at 301-303, 756 P.2d at 581-583, and need not be summarized here. It is noteworthy that in both Fields and Goode, after applying the relevant tests, the courts did not find the asserted violation of the defendant's rights. In Fields, the court held: [O]ur review of the voir dire convinces us that the circumstances do not support the defendant's argument that there is a strong likelihood that the jurors were excused solely because of their membership in the group. 732 P.2d at 1157. (emphasis added). In Goode, the court found that the prosecutor did not know that in striking a woman who had previously sat on a hung jury, she had stricken a Black person from the jury, and thus the court found that the state rebutted the prima facie case by providing a racially-neutral explanation for its challenge. 107 N.M. at 304, 756 P.2d at 584. We emphasize that courts which have approved the Wheeler Doctrine or a rationale similar to it have made it clear that the racial identities of the defendant and of the challenged stricken jurors need not be the same. See, e.g., Kibler, 546 So.2d 710 (1989) (defendant was White and the stricken prospective jurors were Black). Indeed, under a Wheeler rationale, challenges may be made even when the stricken jurors are not members of a cognizable racial minority. Roman v. Abrams, 822 F.2d 214 (2nd Cir.1987) (challenged stricken jurors were white), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 109 S.Ct. 1311, 103 L.Ed.2d 580 (1989). The Supreme Court has not yet resolved the issue before us, although in Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. ___, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989), it was presented with this issue but declined to address it. Soon, however, the Court will address the issue. See People v. Holland, 121 Ill.2d 136, 117 Ill.Dec. 109, 520 N.E.2d 270 (1988), cert. granted, ___ U.S. ___, 109 S.Ct. 1309, 103 L.Ed.2d 579 (1989). Appellant finds support for his argument in Gray v. Mississippi, 481 U.S. 648, 107 S.Ct. 2045, 95 L.Ed.2d 622 (1987). There the Court applied the rationale of Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 20 L.Ed.2d 776 (1968), to a factual setting in which a prospective juror was held improperly excluded for cause in a capital murder case when she gave ambiguous answers to her views on the death penalty. Witherspoon and, in part, Gray, were based on the defendant's right to an impartial jury under both the sixth and fourteenth and sixth amendments. While the issue under Gray was different from the issue here, Appellant argues that the Supreme Court looks favorably on a coalescence of sixth and fourteenth amendment challenges to juries that are erroneously chosen, and thus urges us to apply the Wheeler Doctrine in his favor because of Gray's proximity to that doctrine. We are thus left with two tasks: (1) To decide whether to adopt the Wheeler Doctrine, thereby agreeing with Appellant, as he puts it, to affirm the dictum in Hall ; and (2) To decide, by whatever standard of review we adopt, whether the trial court erred in overruling Appellant's objection to the prosecutor's striking of the two prospective black jurors and in accepting the prosecutor's explanation for why the two persons were struck from the jury.