Opinion ID: 1438798
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Batson and Taylor Holdings As They Affect Jury Selection

Text: Constitutional jurisprudence in this area is clear on two points: (1) Under the Equal Protection Clause of the fourteenth amendment, a defendant may challenge the constitutionality of the state's selection of members of the petit jury when the defendant shows that he is a member of a cognizable racial group and establishes a prima facie case that potential jurors from his group were excluded from the jury for reasons of race. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986); (2) Under the sixth amendment, a defendant is entitled to select a petit jury from a venire that constitutes a representative cross section of the community in which he is tried. Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975). Appellant contends that the prosecutor's alleged racially-discriminatory striking of two Black members from the venire deprived him of a jury comprised of a fair cross section of the community. Appellant thus asks us in effect to adopt the Wheeler Doctrine, discussed below, and to grant the holding in Taylor onto the holding in Batson, arguing that under the state constitution we may afford greater protection to a criminal defendant than has been given criminal defendants by rulings of the United States Supreme Court. The State argues against this. To the State, the sixth amendment requirement that the venire be selected from a cross section of the community is not applicable to the prosecutor's peremptory strikes of prospective jurors. The State argues that Taylor and the sixth amendment apply to selection of the venire, and that Batson and the Equal Protection Clause apply to selection from the venire. In the State's words, the Sixth Amendment requirement that the jury be selected from a fair cross section of the community is not applicable to the petit jury itself, but only to the venire, or jury pool. Because we decide this case on the independent and adequate state ground of the New Mexico Constitution, Article II, Section 14, we do not decide whether the State is correct in asserting that the sixth amendment proscription against exclusion of a section of the community from jury service extends to the prosecutor's use of preemptory challenges. [1]