Opinion ID: 699590
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Magistrate's Findings

Text: 15 Prosecutors Patton and Miller, relying upon the aid of the voir dire transcript and their contemporaneously-taken notes, testified at the Batson hearing as to their justification for exercising a peremptory challenge to excuse Ms. Reed from the venire. Both Patton and Miller stated that their notes did not reflect the race of any venireperson. Patton recalled that in 1983, Ms. Reed's brother was shot and killed by his wife, but that the Will County State's Attorney's Office dropped the charges against the shooter. Patton stated that she believed this incident was vital to Ms. Reed's ability to serve as a juror in Holder's trial because the murder had occurred just two years prior to the trial, was a serious crime against a close relative, and involved the Will County State's Attorney's office. Patton expressed her concern that there was a good chance that there would be some animosity towards the State's Attorney's Office. 6 16 Miller's notes also reflected that Ms. Reed's brother was the victim of a shooting by his wife in Will County. He stated that because it was a Will County shooting, he felt there may be some animosity towards the prosecutor's office because no one was prosecuted for the shooting of her brother. 7 His notes included the phrases seems OK and no hard feelings against the State's Attorney's office. 8 Miller explained that the way the notes are written in the order they're written, it seems when she answered the question whether she had any hard feelings against the State's Attorney's office, I was not satisfied with ... my visceral reaction to that answer. 9 On cross examination of Miller, he explained his skepticism as follows: 17 Q. You also testified that you were concerned that Ms. Reed might harbor ill feelings against the Will County prosecutor's office because your office dismissed charges against the alleged killer of her brother. 18 A. That was a concern of mine, yes. I would point out that I recall Ms. Reed was a black woman, and I'd assumed her brother was black. And the victim in the instant case, the Holder shooting, was white. So it was a concern of mine that maybe Ms. Reed would harbor some feelings of selective prosecution, and it was a real concern in that case. 19 Q. Since she was black? 20 A. That's correct. 21 Q. And that she wouldn't be able to discharge her duties effectively because of her race? 22 A. No. That would not have been a concern, not her race. Only as it related to her brother being shot and killed in Will County, the charges being dropped, and then the victim in the instant case being white and the defendant being black. In that specific area, then her race was relevant. 10 23 Magistrate Lefkow believed these reasons given for excusing Ms. Reed constituted a mere pretext for discrimination. She stated, the record lacks any indication in anything Ms. Reed said or failed to say which would indicate that this concern was well founded. 11 24 Magistrate Lefkow based her opinion mainly on a comparison between Margo Ellman, a white female selected to serve on the jury, and Ms. Reed. Juror Ellman's ex-husband had been indicted for mail fraud and her son had been prosecuted for grand larceny by the Will County State's Attorney's Office. The case against her son was within two years of the Holder trial and resulted in his serving two years probation. Ms. Ellman responded in voir dire that she felt her son and her ex-husband were treated fairly by the court and the prosecution and that she could be a fair juror in the Holder trial. Magistrate Lefkow expressed that these incidents Juror Ellman had with the law were similar to those of Ms. Reed, yet the prosecutors accepted Juror Ellman's statement that she could be fair and rejected Ms. Reed's same assurance. From the prosecutors' disparate treatment of the potential jurors, the magistrate drew the inference that the State must have believed that Ms. Reed as a black individual could not be trusted to be fair in the trial of a black defendant. 12 25 Finally, Magistrate Lefkow noted that although the prosecution expressed great concern with Ms. Reed's incident with the law, they had a seeming lack of interest in the brushes with the law of several of the empaneled jurors. She cited as examples: 26 1) Juror Patricia Reimer who had been sued by a municipality for running ice cream trucks out of her home; 27 2) Juror Mary Pelton, whose brother had been arrested for shooting his gun in his yard six years prior to trial; and 28 3) Juror Glen Meadows who had been arrested fifteen months before the Holder trial in Will County. 29 Because the prosecution did not ask the same detailed questions of these jurors regarding their brushes with the law as were asked of Ms. Reed, Magistrate Lefkow concluded that the prosecutors' stated concern about Ms. Reed's experience was merely a pretext. Accordingly, Magistrate Lefkow issued a report and recommendation on November 24, 1993 concluding that Priscilla Reed was excluded from the jury because of her race.