Opinion ID: 1730571
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Defendant's Prima Facie Case

Text: The first step in this process places a burden of production or of going forward on the defendant. If the defendant is unable to make out a prima facie case of racial discrimination, then the Batson challenge fails and it is not necessary for the prosecutor to articulate race-neutral explanations for his strikes. The defendant may offer any facts relevant to the question of the prosecutor's discriminatory intent to satisfy this burden. Such facts include, but are not limited to, a pattern of strikes by a prosecutor against members of a suspect class, statements or actions of the prosecutor which support an inference that the exercise of peremptory strikes was motivated by impermissible considerations, the composition of the venire and of the jury finally empaneled, and any other disparate impact upon the suspect class which is alleged to be the victim of purposeful discrimination. [20] See State v. Collier, 553 So.2d 815 (La.1989); State v. Thompson, 516 So.2d 349 (La.1987), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 871, 109 S.Ct. 180, 102 L.Ed.2d 149 (1988), re'hg denied, 488 U.S. 976, 109 S.Ct. 517, 102 L.Ed.2d 551 (1988). Regarding this first step of the Batson analysis, the trial court below did not expressly rule on whether the defendant had made out a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination; rather, he immediately moved to the second step and ordered the prosecutor to justify his use of peremptory strikes against black prospective jurors with race-neutral reasons. The court of appeal found this to be a tacit finding by the trial court that the defense had met its burden of going forward, since there would have been no need for the prosecutor to explain his challenges if the trial judge had not found a prima facie case of discrimination. Green, supra, 634 So.2d at 509. We agree with the court of appeal that a trial judge's demand that a prosecutor justify his use of peremptory strikes is tantamount to a finding that the defense has produced enough evidence to support an inference of discriminatory purpose. In any case, [o]nce a prosecutor has offered a race-neutral explanation for the peremptory challenges and the trial court has ruled on the ultimate question of intentional discrimination, the preliminary issue of whether the defendant had made a prima facie showing becomes moot. Hernandez, supra, 500 U.S. at 359, 111 S.Ct. at 1866.