Opinion ID: 789750
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Review of the state court adjudication.

Text: 42 As he explained at the reconstruction hearing, Justice Pincus believed Kern's explanations for challenging Archibald, Smith, and Buckner and found those challenges to be race neutral. The district court explicitly credited Justice Pincus's testimony. DeBerry III, 277 F.Supp.2d at 159-62. We must credit it as well unless the district court committed clear error. See Jenkins, 294 F.3d at 290. DeBerry identifies no basis on which we could find that the district court clearly erred, and the record in no way undermines Justice Pincus's testimony or the district court's finding. Therefore, we accept the district court's assessment. 43 Holding that Justice Pincus made credibility findings does not end our inquiry, we must still determine whether those findings should be set aside. In Hernandez, the Supreme Court explained: 44 Deference to trial court findings on the issue of discriminatory intent makes particular sense ... because, as we noted in Batson, the finding largely will turn on evaluation of credibility. In the typical peremptory challenge inquiry, the decisive question will be whether counsel's race-neutral explanation for a peremptory challenge should be believed. There will seldom be much evidence bearing on that issue, and the best evidence often will be the demeanor of the attorney who exercises the challenge. As with the state of mind of a juror, evaluation of the prosecutor's state of mind based on demeanor and credibility lies peculiarly within a trial judge's province. 45 500 U.S. at 365, 111 S.Ct. 1859 (internal citations omitted). In the context of a direct appeal from the New York Court of Appeals, the Hernandez Court applied a clear error standard of review to the trial court's credibility findings. Id. at 369, 111 S.Ct. 1859. We see no reason to apply a more stringent standard to a state court's credibility findings on habeas review. 46 Just as we found no clear error in the district court's appraisal of Justice Pincus's credibility, we find none in the justice's assessment of Kern's credibility. This holding does not imply that the judge could not have reached a contrary decision. 8 A finding rejecting the prosecutor's explanations would have been supported by the record, including the prosecutor's acknowledgment that he kept other young jurors although he challenged Archibald because of his youth, Smith's law enforcement status, and the prosecutor's inarticulate explanation of his challenge to Buckner. 9 DeBerry III, 277 F.Supp.2d at 152-54. Nevertheless, all of the prosecutor's explanations were facially neutral, the victim was African-American, id. at 154, it appears that some African-American jurors served on the jury, id. at 153, and Justice Pincus was in a far better position than we to evaluate Kern's demeanor and credibility, especially in light of his long history with Kern, id. at 163 n. 10. 10 Similar facts caused the Hernandez Court to find no clear error in the trial court's credibility findings. See Hernandez, 500 U.S. at 369-70, 111 S.Ct. 1859 holding no clear error occurred despite the prosecutor's challenges to three and perhaps more Hispanic jurors because, among other things, the trial court could judge the prosecutor's demeanor, and the victim as well as the prosecutor's witnesses were Hispanic. Likewise, we find no clear error in Justice Pincus's credibility findings. 47 Justice Pincus found that no pattern had been established prior to the Hanson challenge because he credited all of the prosecutor's explanations as truthful and race neutral. As we have already explained, we must uphold the prior credibility findings. Moreover, we find no error in the judge's legal conclusion that defendants had not made out a prima facie Batson claim. After the judge's ruling that no pattern existed, Sheinberg argued that there was a pattern because the prosecutor had challenged the only African-American juror [o]n this selection. Defense counsel bears the burden of articulating the basis, both factual and legal, for a Batson challenge. Overton v. Newton, 295 F.3d 270, 279 (2d Cir.2002). Here, defense counsel tacitly conceded that the prosecutor's prior challenges were no longer relevant to the prima facie showing. Hence, the trial court did not err by limiting its consideration to the challenges in the current round. Nor can we say that it erred by rejecting the argument that a prima facie claim was established by showing that one African-American juror was excused.