Opinion ID: 3149414
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Batson Step Three: Purposeful Discrimination

Text: The remaining question is whether, in striking Casey, the prosecutor had a discriminatory purpose. “‘Discriminatory purpose’ . . . implies more than intent as volition or intent as awareness of consequences. It implies that the decisionmaker . . . selected . . . a particular course of action at least in part ‘because of,’ not merely ‘in spite of,’ its adverse effects upon an identifiable group.” Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S. 352, 360 (1991) (plurality) (quoting Person. Admin. of Mass. v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256, 279 (1979)). The touchstone, as described in our caselaw, is whether race was a “substantial motivating factor” in the prosecutor’s decision to strike Casey. Cook, 593 F.3d at 815. Gleaning the secret truth of the prosecutor’s state of mind is rarely simple, especially years or decades after the trial has drawn to a close. Our assignment is doubly difficult because we’re missing the key piece of evidence—the prosecutor’s explanation for striking Casey. That testimony is often the focal point of the step three analysis. However, the CRITTENDEN V. CHAPPELL 57 prosecutor should hardly be penalized for his honesty. He merely declined to manufacture a convenient reason post hoc. I don’t begrudge the majority its careful comparative juror analysis. A lot of ink has been spilled in these habeas proceedings now going on 16 years.5 That so many diligent jurists have reached differing and conflicting conclusions underscores that the prosecutor’s notes, while slightly illuminating, are ultimately inconclusive. In my view, the prosecutor’s XXXX rating of Casey cannot bear the weight ascribed to it by the majority, nor can a rehashing of the voir dire transcript trump the trial court’s factual finding on Casey’s demeanor. In proving purposeful discrimination, the “burden of persuasion rests with, and never shifts from,” the defendant—Crittenden. Johnson v. California, 545 U.S. 162, 171 (2005) (quoting Purkett v. Elem, 514 U.S. 765, 768 (1995)). Whether the standard of review of the district court’s phase three determination is clear error or de novo, Crittenden has failed to meet his burden. 5 To recap the tortured procedural history of this case: In January 1999, the magistrate judge issued a Finding and Recommendation (“F&R”) stating that the California courts did not unreasonably deny Crittenden’s prima facie Batson challenge. In May 2002, the district court rejected the F&R and ordered an evidentiary hearing, which was held in December 2002. The magistrate judge concluded that “race played some part in the prosecutor’s evaluation of Ms. Casey” but that race was “not the real reason or effective reason for her being stuck from the jury.” The district court agreed and denied Crittenden’s habeas petition, but the Ninth Circuit reversed in Crittenden I. 624 F.3d at 959–60. On remand, the magistrate’s third F&R recommended that although the prosecutor’s racial motivation in striking Casey was “significant,” it was “not substantial” and again recommended denial of the Batson claim. The district court rejected that conclusion and found that the “prosecutor was motivated, consciously or unconsciously, in substantial part by race” and therefore granted Crittenden’s petition. This appeal followed. 58 CRITTENDEN V. CHAPPELL To begin, the prosecutor testified that Xs meant a venire member was “opposed to the death penalty and strongly stated it . . . Checkmarks were people who either were for the death penalty or medium ground that I thought to some degree I would be able to tolerate having on the jury.” The more Xs the juror received, the less favorably the prosecutor viewed that juror; the more checkmarks, vice versa. The prosecutor made the ratings after reviewing the written juror questionnaires and listening to the voir dire answers of each member of the venire. By the time Casey entered the jury box, the prosecutor already had used peremptories against seven of the nine venire members to whom he gave a negative rating of at least one X. The prosecutor did not strike Casey at the first opportunity upon her draw to the jury box; instead, he removed a juror with a “T?” rating. He then struck Casey. When the prosecutor did so, the jury box included the following venire members, as rated by the prosecutor: • Corrao—TTT • Casey—XXXX • Fisher—T • Rehm—T • Tennies—TT • Naess—T • Bertrando—XXX • Shalley—T • McMahan—TTT • Stewart—(no rating but listed as one of the “good jurors” by the prosecutor; she was later excused for hardship). • Fortier—TTT • Curtis—TTT CRITTENDEN V. CHAPPELL 59 Facing a potential jury in which a majority held neutral or favorable views toward the death penalty, the prosecutor did what anyone would expect: he struck Casey and then Bertrando, who stated on his juror questionnaire that “killing people isn’t right no matter who is doing it” and that life imprisonment actually is a “worse punishment.” Having removed every juror with at least an X rating, the prosecutor used his remaining peremptories against those with a T or TT? rating. The jury ultimately was comprised exclusively of jurors with at least a TT rating; all but two scored even higher. As I described earlier, see Section I, the prosecutor used his first 14 peremptories against white jurors, many of whom expressed less doubt about the death penalty than did Casey. The upshot is that, by the time Casey was seated in the jury box, the prosecutor already had removed most of the jurors he considered unfavorable to the case for capital punishment— even those whose death penalty views bent more toward ambivalence than opposition. Leaping to racism as the substantial explanation for the strike against Casey ignores the obvious, because Casey and Bertrando fell right in line with the prosecutor’s pattern of previous strikes. Overall, the prosecutor used 21 of his 26 peremptories against venire members who opposed the death penalty in some fashion. As the magistrate judge noted, Casey “would have been stricken regardless of her race.” Nor is Casey the only juror who received the XXXX rating. The prosecutor also gave Smith, who was white, the same rating, so race is hardly the only reason for the fourth X. The majority says that Smith was more deserving of the XXXX rating because she “arguably expressed stronger opposition to the death penalty than did Casey.” But it takes 60 CRITTENDEN V. CHAPPELL no leap of logic to conclude the opposite, as the magistrate judge did: “Arguably, this four ‘X’ juror was more disposed to render a death verdict than Mrs. Casey.” As one example, the prosecutor asked Smith whether her views would impair her ability to fairly and impartially consider the evidence in favor of the death penalty. Smith’s response: “I don’t think so. I think that there are circumstances where I would be able to agree with the death penalty.” When the prosecutor asked Casey the nearly word-for-word identical question, her answer came with a heavy dose of hesitation: “I can’t say yes. I can’t say no. I really don’t—don’t know.” Smith had a negative run-in with law enforcement, when her husband apparently was falsely identified by a witness to a crime, and described the prospect of jury service as “horrifying” and “frightening.” But in a similar vein, Casey found the idea of capital jury service “scary” and was “very upset about it.” Although Smith used stronger adjectives, both potential jurors exhibited a demeanor poorly suited to sentencing someone to death, setting them apart from others in the jury pool who were ideologically opposed to capital punishment. The majority emphasizes that Casey’s substantive death penalty answers alone did not warrant the XXXX rating, but this view obscures what the trial court said about Casey—that “she is indecisive” and “couldn’t decide whether or not she would be able to follow the law.” Unlike the array of appellate and federal judges to weigh in over the 26 years since Crittenden’s conviction, the trial judge was there. He supervised voir dire, personally questioned Casey, and took notes on her answers and demeanor. We shouldn’t lightly disregard his impressions. See, e.g., § 2254(e)(1); Cook, 593 F.3d at 816 (“[W]e must defer to the trial judge’s CRITTENDEN V. CHAPPELL 61 findings regarding the demeanor of the individuals in the courtroom.”). The voir dire transcript confirms Casey’s apparent angst and anguish. Asked about the prospect of serving on the jury, she replied: “Not good,” and explained: “It is scary.” Later, when asked whether she could be open and objective about whether to impose the death penalty, Casey equivocated: “I can’t say fully. I would try.” She continued, “I can’t sit here and really say for sure if I could . . . I have to say I think I could. This is all new to me. So I am very upset with it.” She agreed with the prosecutor that she’d have difficulty reaching a decision on the death penalty. Her testimony cannot be characterized as coming to a concrete, definitive willingness to vote for the death penalty. The prosecutor came away with the same impression—writing “[c]an’t say if would set aside” on Casey’s juror sheet. The trial judge’s factual finding that Casey was indecisive separates her from juror Clark, who described herself as a “pretty decisive person” who makes big decisions without guilt or self-doubt. Significantly, Clark also articulated a distinctly law-and-order outlook. In prior jury service, Clark had voted to convict a criminal defendant of drunk driving and said she was “really disturbed” by a holdout juror who wanted to acquit because that juror “hated cops. It was very disturbing to me.” When defense counsel asked Clark whether she “believed in law enforcement,” she responded, “I certainly do.” She later added: “I feel very strongly that people should be punished for what they do. I feel very strongly about the law.” Not surprisingly, the prosecutor’s notations say that, aside from her death penalty views, Clark was an “[o]therwise strong” prosecution juror. By contrast, Casey had never served on a jury, made no similar pro-police 62 CRITTENDEN V. CHAPPELL statements, and can fairly be described as tentative in her answers. The majority’s focus on potential jurors Sullivan and Tennies is also misplaced. Maj. Op. 32–35. The prosecutor used peremptories on both of them after having struck Casey. Comparative juror analysis is supposed to comprise “side-by-side comparisons of some black venire panelists who were struck and white panelists allowed to serve.” Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. 231, 241 (2005). Sullivan and Tennies were not “allowed to serve,” so any comparison between them and Casey is not illuminating. In other words, that the prosecutor struck Casey, Sullivan, and Tennies—all of whom expressed varying degrees of hesitancy about the death penalty—does nothing to prove racial bias.6 With the evidence stacked against the proposition that race was the real reason for striking Casey, the district court concluded that Crittenden has met his burden under Batson by showing that the prosecutor was motivated at minimum by unconscious bias. Although I am very sympathetic to the notion of unconscious bias—stealth bias is destructive and 6 The majority cites Sullivan and Tennies as proof that anti-death penalty views were not determinative, because they both expressed some hesitation about the death penalty yet received TT ratings. This overreads the significance of the rating notations, elevating them to scientific certainty and excluding evaluation of the jurors’ other characteristics. The four-month voir dire featured extensive questioning on the death penalty from the judge, prosecutor, and defense counsel. The prosecutor used 21 of his 26 peremptories against jurors who opposed the death penalty, including Sullivan and Tennies. The magistrate noted that a review of the “entire voir dire transcript” shows that “for the most part” the proceedings “focused on the death penalty . . . .” Just because the prosecutor didn’t view all jurors who expressed anti-death penalty sentiments as exactly the same hardly shows that the entire enterprise was a sham. CRITTENDEN V. CHAPPELL 63 real, even though it is often difficult to document—it is not an easy fit within the Batson framework, which focuses on the purpose of the prosecutor rather than the subconscious social and cultural factors that influence decisionmaking.7 The Supreme Court has never endorsed the view that unconscious bias can form the basis for a Batson challenge.8 The only circuit court to address the issue held that “evidence of ‘subconscious’ discrimination is not relevant” to purposeful discrimination under Batson. United States v. Roebke, 333 F.3d 911, 913 (8th Cir. 2003). The majority puts a wishful spin on the district court’s decision. Maj. Op. 40–41. To recap: the district court held that the prosecutor “was motivated, consciously or unconsciously, in substantial part by race” and granted 7 To be sure, Batson’s requirement of purposeful discrimination does not lack for critics. Recently, for example, the Washington Supreme Court bluntly declared that “Batson is . . . failing us,” because modern-day racism isn’t overt but is embodied in “stereotypes that are ingrained and often unconscious.” State v. Saintcalle, 309 P.3d 326, 334–36 (Wash. 2013) (en banc). “Unconscious stereotyping upends the Batson framework,” which is “only equipped to root out ‘purposeful’ discrimination, which many trial courts probably understand to mean conscious discrimination.” Id. at 336. 8 Two Supreme Court justices have referenced unconscious or subconscious bias in the Batson context. In Batson itself, Justice Marshall concurred to warn that “trial courts are ill equipped to second-guess” facially neutral reasons offered by prosecutors, who may not be conscious of their own bias. 476 U.S. at 105, 106 (Marshall, J., concurring). In Miller-El, Justice Breyer echoed Justice Marshall’s views and cited evidence that, despite Batson, widespread racial discrimination in jury selection has persisted. 545 U.S. at 267–68 (Breyer, J., concurring). Both concurrences pointed out shortcomings with the Batson framework and advocated eliminating peremptories altogether; neither is a binding pronouncement of Batson law. 64 CRITTENDEN V. CHAPPELL Crittenden’s habeas petition. Upon the government’s motion for a stay pending appeal, the district court left its earlier decision intact and added some interpretive gloss that it meant to “leave[] no doubt that it concluded [the prosecutor’s] strike of Casey was purposeful discrimination.” However, the district court went on to reiterate that it couldn’t say “why [the prosecutor] was motivated by race”—i.e., whether “by conscious or unconscious racism,” so the court hardly disavowed its unconscious racism theory. In any event, the district court did not retract or amend its order granting the writ, which is the order under review on appeal. In sum, Crittenden has not shown that the prosecutor’s strike was motivated by purposeful discrimination. The record simply does not support the conclusion that reference to Casey’s demeanor and death penalty views were pretext for racial bias. In a case such as this, we should be especially wary of overreading isolated snippets of a voluminous voir dire transcript. As the Supreme Court recently reminded, in capital cases jurors often will express varying degrees of hesitancy about imposing the death penalty. Ayala, 135 S. Ct. at 2201. Both prosecution and defense must make “fine judgment calls about which jurors are more or less willing to vote for the ultimate punishment. These judgment calls may involve a comparison of responses that differ in only nuanced respects, as well as a sensitive assessment of jurors’ demeanor.” Id. Prosecutors must act on instinct; they don’t have the hindsight-laden benefit of a leisurely review of a complete transcript. The prosecutor’s actions here fit well within that band of discretion, so far as the cold record reveals. This case calls to mind Justice Breyer’s observation that the Batson inquiry can be an “awkward, sometime hopeless, CRITTENDEN V. CHAPPELL 65 task of second-guessing a prosecutor’s instinctive judgment—the underlying basis for which may be invisible even to the prosecutor exercising the challenge.” Miller-El, 545 U.S. at 267–68 (Breyer, J., concurring). In view of the record of what actually happened, the trial judge’s findings and the ultimate composition of the jury, our retrospective parsing simply cannot elevate ambiguous, speculative foundation to proof that the prosecutor was motivated in substantial part by racism. I respectfully dissent.