Opinion ID: 78318
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Court of Criminal Appeals' Decision

Text: Our holding is based on our conclusion that the decision of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, McGahee v. State, 554 So.2d at 459-62, was an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. [12] After a defendant has made out his prima facie case of purposeful discrimination by showing that the totality of the relevant facts gives rise to an inference of discriminatory purpose, Batson, 476 U.S. at 93-94, 106 S.Ct. at 1721, and after the State has come forward with its neutral explanations, the trial court then will have the duty to determine if the defendant has established purposeful discrimination, id. at 98, 106 S.Ct. at 1724. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals' decision was an unreasonable application of clearly established law because that court failed to follow clearly established law in the third step of Batson when it did not consider all relevant circumstances in its analysis of the trial court's ruling. The Batson decision is quite clear that [i]n deciding whether the defendant has made the requisite showing, the trial court should consider all relevant circumstances  Batson, 476 U.S. at 96, 106 S.Ct. at 1723 (emphasis added). Because courts must weigh the defendant's evidence against the prosecutor's articulation of a neutral explanation, courts are directed by Batson to consider all relevant circumstances in the third step of the Batson analysis. [13] The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals' failure to consider all relevant circumstances as required by Batson was an unreasonable application of law. In Williams v. Taylor , the Supreme Court held that the state court's failure to evaluate all available evidence was an unreasonable application of law under AEDPA, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), where the applicable legal standard required a weighing of all mitigation evidence. [14] 529 U.S. at 397-98, 120 S.Ct. at 1515 (Stevens, J., writing for the majority). The Court noted that the state court's opinion discussed the mitigation evidence developed at the state post-conviction hearing, [b]ut the state court failed even to mention the sole argument in mitigation that trial counsel did advance. [15] Id. at 398, 120 S.Ct. at 1515. In the concurring portion of her opinion, Justice O'Connor agreed that: The Virginia Supreme Court's decision reveals an obvious failure to consider the totality of the omitted mitigation evidence. . . . For that reason, and the remaining factors discussed in the Court's opinion, I believe that the Virginia Supreme Court's decision involved an unreasonable application of . . . clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States. Taylor, 529 U.S. at 417, 120 S.Ct. at 1525 (O'Connor, J., concurring) (quoting AEDPA, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1)). This Circuit applied the same analysis in Williams v. Allen, 542 F.3d 1326 (11th Cir.2008), and found that a state court decision was unreasonable because the court failed to evaluate the totality of the available mitigation evidence. Id. at 1344 (internal quotation omitted). [16] Therefore, where a legal standard requires a state court to review all of the relevant evidence to a claim, the state court's failure to do so is an unreasonable application of law under AEDPA. [17] The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals decision was structured in the following way. For step one of the Batson inquiry, the court held that the trial court had implicitly found a prima facie case of discrimination when it asked the prosecutor to respond to McGahee's Batson challenge. McGahee, 554 So.2d at 459-60. Thus, while the court found a prima facie case of discrimination, it did not review any of the evidence from the record to make that determination. For step two of the Batson inquiry, the court limited its review to the six African-American jurors whom the court thought McGahee had challenged as being struck on racial grounds. The court quoted the State's explanation regarding the reasons for striking each of those jurors. For step three of the Batson inquiry, the court then purported to analyze all of the quoted reasons in turn. The court found at least one valid, race-neutral reason for striking each of the jurors, and found that [a]fter reviewing the State's reasons for the use of its peremptory strikes (including those not specifically challenged by the appellant) `individually and collectively', [sic] we conclude that the trial judge correctly denied this appellant's motion to quash the jury. McGahee, 554 So.2d at 462 (internal citation omitted). Because the court omitted from step three of its analysis crucial facts which McGahee raised in his brief to that court, we find that the Court of Criminal Appeals did not review all relevant circumstances as required by Batson. 476 U.S. at 96, 106 S.Ct. at 1723. First, the reasons given by the State for striking juror Lemuel Jones, number 106, contain perhaps the clearest indication that the Court of Criminal Appeals failed to consider all relevant circumstances as required by Batson. The State struck Lemuel Jones during the peremptory challenge phase of jury selection. During the proffer of specific explanations for the peremptory strikes after trial, the prosecutor made the following statement regarding Lemuel Jones. Juror number 106, Lemuel Jones, is a black male juror. We left him as an alternate at one point in the striking process prior to Dr. Wright's pronouncement. He was sought as perhaps a juror to be left on the entire panel. However, with Dr. Wright leaving, we felt we did not want to leave him individually. We were concerned about the fact that he was a teacher and we simply did not have any further information on Mr. Jones other than he was a teacher and that he seemed to know Dr. Wright. We did attempt and ask for a recess during the period to locate further information about Mr. Jones, attempting to make some emergency type phone calls, but were unsuccessful. We felt we had other choices which we did have clear information on and left him as an alternate. The Court of Criminal Appeals repeated this statement in full in its opinion, McGahee, 554 So.2d at 461, and reviewed the statement with the following analysis. Lemuel Jones was struck because he was a teacher and because the State did not have a lot of information on him. The State's assertion that it strikes teachers as a general rule because of their [teachers'] social approach to dealing with people is totally insufficient to establish why a teacher, specifically Jones, would be biased against the State in this particular case. In fact, under the circumstances of this case (the murders took place in a school classroom), teachers would be just as likely to be biased in favor of the State. The State's other explanation for striking Jones is somewhat weak but we find it to be sufficient because the State struck a white juror for the same reason. This fact indicates that the State's explanation was legitimate and the decision to strike Jones was not racially motivated. McGahee, 554 So.2d at 462 (internal citations omitted). As we understand the Alabama court's analysis, it read the record as providing two reasons for the strike of Lemuel Jones: (1) he was a teacher and (2) the State did not have a lot of information on him. The court clearly limited its review to only these two reasons and did not implicitly review any other reasons. Lemuel Jones was struck because he was a teacher and because the State did not have a lot of information on him. Id. at 462. The court then held that the explanation that Jones was a teacher was totally insufficient, but that [t]he State's other explanation is somewhat weak. Id. (emphasis added). Although weak, the court held that reason was sufficient. This analysis is an unreasonable application of law under Batson because the court failed to review the third reason given by the prosecutor. The court's failure to include this third reason in its analysis is surprising because McGahee specifically raised this argument in his brief to the Court of Criminal Appeals. The State's third reason for striking Jones was that with Dr. Wright leaving, we felt that we did not want to leave him individually. McGahee argued to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals and to this Court that the statement that the State did not want to leave him individually can be read only to mean that the State did not want to leave Jones as the sole black juror on the panel. [18] We are forced to agree that the record reflects no similarity between Dr. Wright and Lemuel Jones other than their race and the fact they are teachers, and that the statement we did not want to leave him individually indicates that the State did not want to leave a sole black juror whom they did not know on the jury panel. We have been unable to imagine another non-racial interpretation of this statement. Although pressed at oral argument for a non-racial interpretation, the State has not provided one. The failure by the Court of Criminal Appeals to consider the State's articulation of an explicitly racial reason for striking Jones is an unreasonable application of Batson. Certainly, a statement by the prosecutor that a juror was struck because of his race is a relevant circumstance in determining whether Batson has been violated. Because the Court of Criminal Appeals did not consider the fact that the State proffered an explicitly racial reason for striking Lemuel Jones, we find that the Court of Criminal Appeals did not consider all relevant circumstances during the third step of Batson 's analysis. Its review of the trial court's decision was, therefore, an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. Furthermore, the Court of Criminal Appeals' decision also failed to consider two additional crucial facts in its Batson analysis, both of which were raised by McGahee in his brief to that court. First, the court failed to consider the fact that 100% of the African-American potential jurors were removed from the jury by the State. While the Court of Criminal Appeals initially noted that [t]he State used sixteen of its twenty-two strikes to exclude all of the black venire members from the jury, McGahee, 554 So.2d at 459, the court never discussed the fact that all of the black venire members had been removed by the prosecution through the challenges for cause and peremptory challenges, and never discussed this pattern or the significance thereof. In discussing the sort of evidence that should be considered by a court during a Batson challenge, the Supreme Court stated that [f]or example, a `pattern' of strikes against black jurors included in the particular venire might give rise to an inference of discrimination. Batson, 476 U.S. at 97, 106 S.Ct. at 1723. There can be no clearer pattern than the total removal of all African-American jurors from the venire by the State. As Batson explained: [t]otal or seriously disproportionate exclusion of Negroes from jury venires is itself such an unequal application of the law . . . as to show intentional discrimination. Id. at 93, 106 S.Ct. at 1721 (internal quotations and citation omitted). The failure of the Court of Criminal Appeals to consider this crucial fact was an unreasonable application of Batson. Second, the court failed to consider the fact that the State had proffered as an explanation that it removed multiple African-American jurors because of their low intelligence when the intelligence of the jurors was unsupported by any evidence in the record. Of the six juror strikes that the Alabama court specifically considered in its decision, Edith Ferguson and Irene Lesure were struck, among other reasons, for low intelligence. [19] Despite the fact that McGahee argued on appeal that there was no support in the record for finding any of the African-American jurors had low intelligence, the Alabama court failed to consider this explanation entirely in its discussion of the Batson claim and in its analysis of Irene Lesure's and Edith Ferguson's strikes. The State's proffer of the same unsupported reason to explain several of its strikes against African-American jurors is certainly a relevant fact that should have been considered by the Alabama court. Furthermore, the State's claim that several African-Americans were of low intelligence is a particularly suspicious explanation given the role that the claim of low intelligence has played in the history of racial discrimination from juries. The fact that one of the State's proffered reasons for striking multiple African-American jurors is unsupported by the record and historically tied to racism should have been included in the third step of Batson, where all relevant circumstances must be examined to determine whether the State has struck any of the jurors based on their race. Because the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals omitted these highly relevant facts from its Batson analysis, the court did not undertake a review of all relevant circumstances as required by the third step of Batson. Because the court did not review all relevant circumstances, we hold that the decision was an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as determined by the Supreme Court.