Opinion ID: 1105577
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Exclusion by Defense of Male Venirepersons

Text: The defendant argues that the trial court erred in allowing defense trial counsel to violate the equal protection rights of prospective male jurors whom the defense struck peremptorily. The defendant argues this action was in violation of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986) (racially discriminatory exercise of peremptory challenges by the state are unconstitutional); J.E.B. v. Alabama, 511 U.S. 127, 114 S.Ct. 1419, 128 L.Ed.2d 89 (1994) (extended Batson protection to gender-based discriminatory peremptory challenges) and Georgia v. McCollum, 505 U.S. 42, 112 S.Ct. 2348, 120 L.Ed.2d 33 (1992) (a criminal defendant's racially discriminatory exercise of peremptory challenges inflicts the harms addressed by Batson ). Defendant bases his claim on and extends an analysis advanced in United States v. Huey, 76 F.3d 638 (5th Cir.1996). In Huey, the federal court of appeals reviewed the conviction of a white defendant whose trial counsel used all five of his peremptory challenges to strike five African-American veniremen. The court found that: the district court failed to discharge its clear duty either to elicit a race-neutral explanation for the peremptory challenges or deny the use of those challenges [and thereby] committed reversible error in determining implicitly that the equal protection rights of these jurors had not been violated. Such error requires a new trial.... Huey, 76 F.3d at 641. Defendant makes an analogous if weaker showing here, in that defense trial counsel used seven of eight peremptory challenges against men. [3] As a lower federal court opinion, Huey can provide no more than persuasive authority in this court, and does not control this court's decisions, because lower federal court decisions do not bind this court's interpretation of federal constitutional law. State v. Sanders, 93-0001, p. 7 (La. 11/30/94), 648 So.2d 1272, 1279, cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 116 S.Ct. 2504, 135 L.Ed.2d 194 (1996); State v. Johnson, 94-1077, p. 11 n. 5 (La. 1/16/96), 667 So.2d 510, 517, n. 5 (same). Huey fails entirely to persuade, standing as it does for the proposition that a defendant can both violate the constitutional rights of veniremen and the state's right to a fair trial, and subsequently, if acquittal has not put him safely out of reach on double jeopardy grounds, claim error and receive a new trial. A federal circuit court has already rejected Huey 's ruling, finding, inter alia, that [g]iving a defendant a new trial because of his own violation of the Constitution would make a laughingstock of the judicial process. United States v. Boyd, 86 F.3d 719, 725 (7th Cir.1996). The Boyd court also found that the defendant had waived the right to a jury chosen without regard to impermissible characteristics (in his case, race) and so could not complain of jury composition. Id., 86 F.3d at 722. The Boyd court added that the defendant could not complain of ineffective assistance of counsel because he suffered no prejudice under the second prong of the test of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). The Seventh Circuit pointed out that the Huey decision rests on a non-sequitur arising out of a misreading of Batson and its progeny: though these cases set up rules which set limits on peremptory challenges to protect the interests of jurors and the criminal justice system.... it does not follow that by violating these important social interests a defendant can help himself to a new trial. Id., at 724. In this case, the defendant's arguments rely almost entirely on Huey and so suffers from all of its weaknesses.