Opinion ID: 3149414
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Comparison with Juror Smith

Text: The district court found a comparison of Casey and another juror, Lois Smith, weighed in favor of finding racial bias. Smith was the only other prospective juror rated XXXX. The court found Smith was a far worse juror for the prosecution than Casey. It stated Smith’s “distinctly strong and unshakable death penalty views and experiences with the justice system made her the antithesis of a prosecution juror.” The court observed it was “puzzling why Casey received the same rating as Smith, when no similarly glaring evidence for prosecutorial disfavor of Casey exists.” The court’s findings from the comparative analysis of Casey and Smith were not clearly erroneous. Smith also recounted what she described as a “horrendous” experience 26 CRITTENDEN V. CHAPPELL with law enforcement in which her husband was wrongly implicated in a crime by an eyewitness who had identified him notwithstanding that he is white and the suspect was African-American. She said she “would be extra cautious” because of that experience. The district court reasoned this experience would have been of particular concern to the prosecution because “a key element of [the] evidence against [Crittenden] at trial was that eye witnesses had seen a black man matching [Crittenden’s] description near the victims’ home when the murders occurred.” Casey, in contrast, presented no similar negative experiences with law enforcement. And, as the court correctly noted, aside from her death penalty views, Casey was a “model prosecution juror according to [the prosecutor’s] own criteria.” The prosecutor testified he looked for jurors who were “employed, homeowners . . . people who had something to lose in society, who might be victims of crime, solid citizens, preferably fairly well educated.” Casey had been married for 42 years, had two adult children, went to church on Sundays, had lived in the same home for 17 years, and said she was concerned about drugs and street gangs. Although Casey opposed the death penalty, she repeatedly affirmed that her opposition would not prohibit her from following the court’s instructions, applying the proper standard of proof or voting to impose the death penalty. The trial judge asked “whether your feelings concerning the death penalty would influence your vote to the extent . . . that you would not vote for a first degree murder conviction,” and she answered, “No.” The judge then asked whether her death penalty views would cause her to refuse to vote for special circumstances that would implicate the death penalty, and she CRITTENDEN V. CHAPPELL 27 answered, “No.” The judge then asked whether her death penalty views would cause her to “automatically and in every case vote against the imposition of the death penalty,” and she answered, “No.” When questioned by defense counsel, Casey again said she could conceive of a situation in which the death penalty might be appropriate, she would be willing and able to vote for the death penalty if a crime were “awful bad” and she had no “qualms” about applying the court’s instructions regarding the proper standard of proof. The prosecutor then began his examination by asking Casey, “Now, I gather[] . . . that you do not believe in the death penalty?” Casey answered: I really don’t. But if it is bad, . . . really bad and I felt that, you know – I hate death. I don’t know how to express myself, really. But I really hate to see anybody be put to death. And I hate to see someone take a life. I don’t care whose it is. So – it is – it is hard for me to express it. But I could, if proven to me, to, no doubt, that it was a crime, then I don’t think I would hesitate. Upon further questioning, Casey expressed some hesitation, saying, “if it is proven to me, truly proven to me, and I feel deep down inside that he did it, I could. I think I could. . . . I have to say I think I could. This is all new to me. So I am very upset with it.” She also said she thought her feelings about the death penalty would make it difficult for her to make a decision regarding the death penalty, and she did not know whether it would substantially impair her ability to fairly evaluate the evidence. She then reaffirmed, though, that her feelings about the death penalty would not cause her 28 CRITTENDEN V. CHAPPELL to “lean[] toward life instead of death,” and that she could vote for the death penalty if she “heard facts and circumstances which warranted it.” Although Casey and Smith both expressed opposition to and reservations about imposing the death penalty, the voir dire transcripts support the court’s conclusion that Smith was the worse juror for the prosecution. Smith arguably expressed stronger opposition to the death penalty than did Casey – she said she found the prospect of serving on a jury in a death penalty case “horrifying” – and recounted a “horrendous” experience with law enforcement caused by mistaken eyewitness identification. The court did not clearly err by concluding the comparison of Casey and Smith supports the conclusion that the prosecution’s challenge of Casey was substantially based on her race.6