Opinion ID: 2584741
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Miller-El II Decision

Text: When Miller-El was tried for capital murder in a Texas state court, the United States Supreme Court had not yet decided Batson. Miller-El moved to strike the jury on the grounds that the prosecution's peremptory challenges to 10 of 11 Black members of the venire violated the equal protection clause. ( Miller-El I, supra, 537 U.S. at p. 326.) [10] To meet the existing standard of Swain v. Alabama (1965) 380 U.S. 202 [13 L.Ed.2d 759, 85 S.Ct. 824], Miller-El sought to show the prosecution's conduct was part of a larger pattern of discrimination aimed at excluding Blacks from jury service. The trial court denied the motion. ( Miller-El II, supra, 545 U.S. at p. 236.) Miller-El was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to death. ( Ibid. ) The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's criminal court of last resort, remanded the case to the trial court to apply the newly articulated Batson standard. Upon remand, the original trial court conducted a Batson hearing more than two years after the jury had been empanelled. ( Miller-El I, supra, 537 U.S. at p. 329.) The court reviewed the voir dire record and permitted one of the prosecutors to provide reasons for previously unexplained peremptory challenges. The trial court accepted the prosecution's proffered reasons, which the judge called `completely credible [and] sufficient' as the grounds for a finding of `no purposeful discrimination.' ( Miller-El II, supra, 545 U.S. at pp. 236-237.) The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed, finding `ample support' in the voir dire record for the prosecutors' explanations. ( Id. at p. 237.) Miller-El's case shifted to the federal courts, without initial success. The federal district court denied habeas corpus relief and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the appeal by denying a certificate of appealability. In Miller-El I, supra, 537 U.S. 322, the Supreme Court reversed, concluding the certificate of appealability should have issued. ( Id. at p. 327.) Ultimately, the Fifth Circuit rejected Miller-El's claim on its merits. The Supreme Court again granted certiorari and again reversed. ( Miller-El II, supra, 545 U.S. at p. 237.) The Miller-El II opinion reveals the case to be a troubling and blatant example of the way in which racism can infect the justice system. It also reflects the high court's commitment to eradicate this pernicious influence. Although noting that `[f]or more than a century, this Court consistently and repeatedly has reaffirmed that racial discrimination by the State in jury selection offends the Equal Protection Clause' ( Miller-El II, supra, 545 U.S. at p. 238), the court nevertheless confronted a case in which it concluded that undeniably the state's lawyers had selected and rejected jury panelists because of race. ( Id. at p. 266.) Miller-El II was even more distressing because state and federal courts had repeatedly affirmed the defendant's death sentence in the face of a powerful record of racism. (See Miller-El II, supra, 545 U.S. at p. 265.) The Supreme Court was clearly skeptical of the conclusions of these courts and legitimately so. After reviewing the entire record, the Supreme Court determined that the repeated findings by both the trial and appellate courts were utterly unsupported. The court's skepticism was reflected in its language. It noted, for example, that the record revealed incredible explanations by the prosecutors in a voir dire process replete with evidence of reliance on race ( id. at p. 265); that [i]t blinks reality to deny that the State struck two Black panelists because of their race ( id. at p. 266); and that the prosecutor's belated explanation of one those challenges reeks of afterthought ( id. at p. 246). In a vigorous rebuke, the Supreme Court characterized the Fifth Circuit's conclusion as unsupportable as the `dismissive and strained interpretation' of [Miller-El's] evidence that we disapproved when we decided Miller-El was entitled to a certificate of appealability. ( Id. at p. 265.) The Supreme Court's review was conducted under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Thus, relief was available only if the trial court's acceptance of the prosecutors' explanations was an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding. (28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2); see Miller-El II, supra, 545 U.S. at p. 240.) On review, the high court presumed the trial court's factual findings were correct and placed the burden on the defense to establish otherwise by clear and convincing evidence. (28 U.S.C § 2254(e)(1); Miller-El II, at p. 240.) The court stated: The standard is demanding but not insatiable; as we said the last time this case was here, `[d]eference does not by definition preclude relief.' ( Miller-El II, at p. 240, quoting Miller-El I, supra, 537 U.S. at p. 340.) The Supreme Court undertook a review of the entire record consistent with Batson' s teaching that `all relevant circumstances' may be relied upon in determining whether there had been purposeful discrimination. ( Miller-El II, supra, 545 U.S. at p. 240.) It noted the bare statistics, in which the prosecutors used peremptory challenges to excuse nine of the 10 Blacks found qualified to serve. ( Id. at pp. 240-241.) The court also took into account a remarkable Texas procedure known as the jury shuffle. [11] [E]ither side may literally reshuffle the cards bearing panel members' names, thus rearranging the order in which members of a venire panel are seated and reached for questioning. (545 U.S. at p. 253.) Those panelists not examined before the end of the week are dismissed. ( Ibid. ) On two occasions when a number of Black panelists were seated at the front of the panel, the prosecutor reshuffled. ( Id. at p. 254.) According to testimony, the district attorney's office admitted it had relied on the shuffling procedure `in the past' to manipulate the racial composition of juries. ( Ibid. ) The record revealed that for decades before Miller-El's trial, Dallas County prosecutors had a specific policy of systematically excluding blacks from juries. ( Miller-El II, supra, 545 U.S. at p. 263.) Although testimony on this point was conflicting, one county judge testified that his former supervisor in the district attorney's office told him that he would be fired if he allowed Blacks to serve as jurors. Defendant presented evidence that the district attorney's office gave its prosecutors a manual, known as the Sparling Manual, written in 1968 by a prosecutor who also became a judge. The manual outlined reasons for excluding minority panelists from jury service. The manual remained in circulation until 1976 or later and was available to at least one of Miller-El's prosecutors. ( Id. at p. 264.) The court concluded that prosecutors took their cues from this manual, as shown by their notes recording the race of each prospective juror. ( Id. at p. 266.) At oral argument the state claimed these notations could have been made to avoid a Batson violation. But the court pointedly observed: Batson, of course, was decided the month after Miller-El was tried. ( Id. at p. 264, fn. 38, italics added.) [12] The state offered a variety of reasons for excusing the Black panelists. The prosecution's credibility in asserting those reasons was the key question. The record of voir dire obliterated any semblance of truthfulness. In addition to the factors discussed above, the Supreme Court pointed out that prosecutors used a line of questioning admittedly designed to create cause to strike. ( Miller-El II, supra, 545 U.S. at p. 261.) Prosecutors asked panelists to state the minimum sentence they would impose for murder. Before answering, 94 percent of White panelists were told that the statutory minimum was five years. Just over 10 percent of Black panelists were given this same information. If a Black panelist responded with a term that was above the five-year minimum, the prosecutor, while normally preferring tough jurors, would rely on this answer to justify a strike. ( Ibid. ) The Supreme Court characterized the questioning as trickery and manipulative. ( Miller-El II, supra, 545 U.S. at p. 261.) Prosecutors sought to explain their disproportionate use of this punishment ruse on Black panelists. ( Id. at p. 262, fn. 34.) They claimed that use of the manipulative script was not based on a panelist's race but on opposition or ambivalence to the death penalty reflected in questionnaire or voir dire responses. ( Id. at pp. 261-262 & fns. 34, 35.) The court tested that explanation against the record, and found that it flatly fail[ed] to explain why most White panelists who expressed opposition or ambivalence were never subjected to the trick question. ( Id. at p. 262.) Other evidence considered by the court, and at issue in this appeal, was a comparative juror analysis in which the responses of two excused Black panelists were compared to the responses of non-Black panelists who were allowed to serve. ( Miller-El II, supra, 545 U.S. at pp. 241-252.) Specifically, as to panelist Billy Jean Fields, the prosecutor claimed he used his peremptory challenge because Fields `said that he could only give death if he thought a person could not be rehabilitated.' ( Id. at p. 243.) In fact, the record showed that the prosecutor mischaracterized Fields's testimony and that Fields unequivocally stated that he could impose the death penalty regardless of the possibility of rehabilitation. ( Id. at p. 244.) Thus, the prosecutor's purported reason was starkly contradicted by the record. The court pointed out that other White panelists were accepted by the prosecution with no evident reservations, even though these panelists expressed concerns about imposing death when rehabilitation might be possible. ( Ibid. ) Further, contrary to the prosecutor's claimed concern on this topic, he asked no followup or clarifying questions when nonminority panelists gave answers that raised the topic. ( Id. at pp. 244-245.) A second Black panelist, Joe Warren, was asked what he thought the death penalty accomplished. Warren replied, in essence, that he had mixed feelings because while the death penalty might deter crime, it might also relieve a murderer of the suffering he would endure by serving a lengthy prison term. ( Miller-El II, supra, 545 U.S. at pp. 247-248.) At trial, the prosecution did not mention these remarks when it excused Warren, but at the Batson hearing two years later the prosecution identified these `inconsistent responses' as the reason for the challenge. ( Id. at p. 248.) The Supreme Court observed that, while on its face, the prosecutor's explanation seemed reasonable, its plausibility is severely undercut by the prosecutor's failure to object to at least four non-Black jurors who also stated that life in prison was a harsher punishment. ( Ibid. ) As to Warren, the court stated: The whole of the voir dire testimony subject to consideration casts the prosecution's reasons for striking Warren in an implausible light. Comparing his strike with the treatment of panel members who expressed similar views supports a conclusion that race was significant in determining who was challenged and who was not. ( Id. at p. 252.) [13] The Supreme Court emphasized that the case for discrimination went beyond the comparative juror analysis to include a broader pattern of practice during the jury selection: The prosecution's shuffling of the venire panel, its enquiry into views on the death penalty, its questioning about minimum acceptable sentences: all indicate decisions probably based on race. Finally, the appearance of discrimination is confirmed by widely known evidence of the general policy of the Dallas County District Attorney's Office to exclude black venire members from juries at the time Miller-El's jury was selected. ( Miller-El II, supra, 545 U.S. at p. 253.) The court acknowledged that at some points the significance of the evidence was open to judgment calls, but when this evidence on the issues raised is viewed cumulatively its direction is too powerful to conclude anything but discrimination. ( Id. at p. 265.)