Opinion ID: 865185
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Failure to Challenge Peremptory Strikes.

Text: ¶14. Powers argues that Miller-El v. Cockrell, 545 U.S. 231, 125 S.Ct. 2317, 162 L.Ed.2d 196 (2005), is an intervening decision which excepts presentation of this issue from the 9 procedural bar.2 In Miller-El, the United States Supreme Court found that potential jurors had been excluded on the basis of race despite the prosecution’s announcement of race-neutral reasons at trial. With regard to a jury with only one African-American, the Supreme Court held, “Happenstance is unlikely to produce this disparity.” 125 S.Ct. at 2325, 162 L.Ed.2d at 214 (citing Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 342, 123 S.Ct. 1029, 154 L.Ed.2d 931)). ¶15. While the decision in Miller-El stands for the proposition that it is possible for potential jurors to be excluded on the basis of race despite the presentation of a race-neutral reason for the exercise of a peremptory strike, it does not change the basic holding of Batson that the use of peremptory strikes based upon race is prohibited. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 97, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 1723, 90 L.Ed.2d 69, 88 (1986). Powers’s trial jury unquestionably had only one African-American juror; however, this Court on direct appeal specifically held that, from the totality of the record on this issue, there was no viable Batson claim to be raised by trial counsel and that it was “inconceivable how counsel could have been ineffective, and thus Powers’s case prejudiced by failure to raise such a challenge.” Powers, 883 So.2d at 31. This issue is procedurally barred from reconsideration in that the holding of Miller-El does not constitute an intervening case whose import would have changed the outcome of Powers’s 2 Miss. Code Ann. § 99-39- 27(9) (Supp. 2006) states, in pertinent part that excepted from a procedural bar or res judicata prohibition “are those cases in which the prisoner can demonstrate either that there has been intervening decision of the Supreme Court of either the State of Mississippi or the United States which would have actually adversely affected the outcome of his conviction or sentence....” 10 trial. Alternatively, in considering the merits of this issue, we find this issue to still be without merit.