Opinion ID: 2120964
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: negating the prima facie case

Text: Having determined that defendant made a prima facie case under Batson, we now turn to a review of the trial court's implicit finding that the State's explanations negated any inference of purposeful discrimination. In so doing, we are conscious that the State's explanations must first be clear, reasonably specific, legitimate, and nonracial in order to dispel the presumption created by the prima facie case ( Batson, 476 U.S. at 98 n. 20, 106 S.Ct. at 1724, n. 20, 90 L.Ed.2d at 88 n. 20); that the trial court's effort at evaluating those explanations must then be sincere and reasoned in order to support a finding on the ultimate discrimination issue ( People v. Harris (1989), 129 Ill.2d 123, 174-75, 135 Ill.Dec. 861, 544 N.E.2d 357); and that ordinarily we should give great deference to the trial court's findings of fact on purposeful discrimination ( Batson, 476 U.S. at 98 n. 21, 106 S.Ct. at 1724 n. 21, 90 L.Ed.2d at 89 n. 21; Harris, 129 Ill.2d at 175, 135 Ill.Dec. 861, 544 N.E.2d 357). Defendant contends that the State should be held to its original contemporaneous attempts at explanation rather than being allowed to supplement its original record with additional, post- Batson rationales. For analytical purposes, we shall attach no importance to the mere fact that some of the State's explanations came years after others were offered. We disregard this temporal disparity for several reasons. The prosecution was laboring under a lesser, pre- Batson burden at the 1982 hearing and thus had less incentive to develop a full record of its reasons for exercising peremptory strikes. The prosecution was called upon to do so without the benefit of a transcript or preparation time. And, since assessment of the prosecution's reasons largely resolves to a question of credibility, which the trial court is in the best position to judge, we defer to that court's decision to believe the prosecution's statement of reasons unless we find that the trial court's finding of no purposeful discrimination was against the manifest weight of the evidence. Gay. The prosecutors originally could not remember venire member Gayle Gay or why they had challenged her earlier in the day, but the trial judge offered that he would have done so because she was a young black lady about the same age as the defendant. Five years later, one of the prosecutors said that Gay's having been the victim of an unsolved felony was the first thing that came to our mind and that her challenge was primarily because of that fact. The prosecutor added that Gay had initially appeared to say that the unsolved crime might affect her impartiality, and that, despite her quick self-correction, the State had still been concerned. The prosecutor also argued that the State had peremptorily challenged five nonblack venire members for similar crime-related reasons. Although defendant urges that the strikes of the black venire members should properly be compared to nonblack members who were accepted, rather than to nonblack members who were rejected, we believe that in appropriate circumstances either mode of comparison could properly be employed by a trial court in reaching its ultimate finding on purposeful discrimination. Compare People v. Harris (1989), 129 Ill.2d 123, 180, 135 Ill.Dec. 861, 544 N.E.2d 357 (comparison of rejected with accepted should be given great weight), and People v. Young (1989), 128 Ill.2d 1, 23-24, 131 Ill.Dec. 78, 538 N.E.2d 453 (discussing comparison of rejected with accepted), with People v. Mahaffey (1989), 128 Ill.2d 388, 132 Ill.Dec. 366, 539 N.E.2d 1172 (comparing rejected blacks with rejected whites), and Ex parte Branch (Ala.1987), 526 So.2d 609, 621-25, 626 n. 13 (rejected-accepted and rejected-rejected comparisons may be proper under Batson ). See also People v. Hall (1983), 35 Cal.3d 161, 168-69, 672 P.2d 854, 858-59, 197 Cal.Rptr. 71, 75-76 (comparing rejected with accepted); Hall, 35 Cal.3d at 171-73, 672 P.2d at 860-61, 197 Cal.Rptr. at 77-79 (Bird, C.J., concurring) (recognizing that rejected-rejected comparisons may be proper if State actually shows that comparison groups were similarly situated and were rejected on identical or comparable grounds); People v. Johnson (1989), 47 Cal.3d 1194, 1220-21, 767 P.2d 1047, 1056-57, 255 Cal.Rptr. 569, 578-79 (disapproving a reviewing court's undue emphasis on its own cold-record rejected-accepted comparison, limiting the detail required in trial courts' rejected-accepted comparisons, and allowing trial courts to make both rejected-accepted and rejected-rejected comparisons). But see Tompkins v. State (Tex.Crim.App.1987), 774 S.W.2d 195, 202 & n. 6A, aff'd by an equally divided Court (1989), 490 U.S. 754, 109 S.Ct. 2180, 104 L.Ed.2d 834, (O'Connor, J., not participating) (rejected-accepted comparison would have been highly relevant); State v. Slappy (Fla.1988), 522 So.2d 18, 22, aff'g Slappy v. State (Fla.App.1987), 503 So.2d 350 (rejected-accepted comparison); Gamble v. State (1987), 257 Ga. 325, 328-30, 357 S.E.2d 792, 795-96 (same); State v. Butler (Mo.App.1987), 731 S.W.2d 265, 271-72 (same); State v. Gilmore (1986), 103 N.J. 508, 511 A.2d 1150 (preferring rejected-accepted over rejected-rejected comparison). In the present case, the trial court chose to credit the State's comparison of rejected black venire members with nonblack members who the State said were rejected for similar reasons. Defendant sought to distinguish these nonblack venire members from the five black members whose challenges he attacks as discriminatory. The State claimed that it challenged all these nonblack and black venire members because they had all had experiences with crime. Of course, defendant could not directly show that the State's cited reason for challenging the nonblack members was not the State's true reason, and as the judge of credibility the trial court accepted the State's explanation. It is undeniable that Gay was of about defendant's age and that her answer to a question on impartiality could sincerely, even if mistakenly, be construed as equivocal. Defendant contends that it would be more probative to compare the excluded black venire members with allegedly similar nonblacks who were accepted by the State. However, we cannot say that the manifest weight of the evidence dictated a decision contrary to the trial court's implicit conclusion that the State had articulated a credible, legitimate, specific, nonracial explanation for challenging Gay and that defendant had failed to prove purposeful discrimination by the preponderance of evidence. The trial judge's own 1982 reference to Gay as being black and a lady, no matter how inappropriate or how suggestive of improper considerations, cannot actually be presumed to have played a part in the court's 1987 assessment of the prosecutors' credibility in explaining why they challenged her. Even though the trial judge had volunteered that Gay's race, sex, and proximity in age to defendant's age were reasons that he might have challenged her, he had at least arguably been attempting merely to refresh the prosecutors' recollection of Gay. In any event, regardless of how we might decide a matter if we sat as a court of first instance, we cannot on review substitute our judgment for the trial court's when we cannot find the judgment of the latter to be against the manifest weight of the evidence. Franklin. The State explained its challenge of Kenneth Franklin by derogating his brief employment history; by saying that he could hardly talk to, look at, or understand the court; and by stating that he was a young, unemployed, single man of about defendant's age and without community roots. These explanations were facially legitimate, specific, and race-neutral, and again we cannot say that the trial court decided against the manifest weight of the evidence in finding such State explanations credible and preponderant. Defendant argues that two jurors or alternates were also unemployed, but a large number of factors can enter into decisions to exercise peremptory challenges that are not susceptible of point-for-point comparison with decisions not to exercise them. If a prosecutor excused one person and not another it does not follow that this in itself shows that the prosecutor's explanations were pretextual. ( People v. Young (1989), 128 Ill.2d 1, 23, 131 Ill.Dec. 78, 538 N.E.2d 453.) An unemployed venire member's 20 years of residence with an unemployed mother do not automatically equate with community roots; even though unemployment is not necessarily rootlessness, employment may rationally be viewed as the chief or only substantial form of community roots in some individual situations. Moreover, the trial judge was present and saw Franklin's demeanor prior to deciding the credibility of the State's explanation citing that demeanor. Buckley. Despite the State's apparent confusion over whether Buckley or his brother was a drug counselor, either fact would clearly be a legitimate, specific, race-neutral reason for challenging him. Once again, it was the trial judge's role to pass on the credibility of the State's explanation that the occupation of drug counseling was its reason for challenging Buckley. Defendant does not and cannot say with confidence that the drug-counseling connection was immaterial to the State's decision to challenge Buckley. Neither can we. Bartlett. Some of our comments about the demeanor-based challenge of Franklin might apply equally to the challenge of Bartlett. In addition, she gave an equivocal answer regarding membership in a group that at one point she called Defenders. The trial court had discretion to decide that the State credibly cited these facts in explaining why it challenged her and that the State's explanations preponderated over any prima facie case on defendant's part. Wadley. With or without a factual basis, the State represented that it had reason to believe that a certain witness could be found near or in the building where Wadley lived. When this representation was first made, defense counsel voiced no contemporaneous disagreement with it. If credible (as the court found it to be), this was a legitimate, specific, and race-neutral explanation, especially when coupled with the additional fact that Wadley's age was similar to defendant's. In sum, regarding these five black venire members, the trial court's finding of no purposeful discrimination cannot be said with confidence to be against the manifest weight of the evidence. We recognize that the Batson -related procedural irregularities in this cause, and a certain paucity of analysis in the trial court's treatment of the Batson issue, are related to the fact that these proceedings spanned the pre- and post- Batson eras at a time when Batson requirements were less clear than today. Thus, as post- Batson jurisprudential and prosecutorial standards evolve to maturity, it may not be vain to hope that the procedural flaws of this cause and of its contemporaries will become purely anomalous.