Opinion ID: 2995229
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Allegation of Purposeful Racial

Text: Discrimination Alanis alleges that the government violated his right to equal protection of the law when it used a peremptory challenge to strike the only black member of the jury venire. At the time of the strike, defense counsel objected based upon Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S. Ct. 1712, 90 L. Ed. 2d 69 (1986). Under Batson, a court must follow a three stage analysis to determine whether a peremptory strike was discriminatory: (1) the defendant must make a prima facie showing of discrimination, (2) the prosecution must then present a race-neutral explanation for striking the juror, and (3) the trial court must decide whether the prosecution’s reasons are pretextual and whether the defendant has proven purposeful discrimination. United States v. Jordan, 223 F.3d 676, 686 (7th Cir. 2000). Here, when the district court asked the prosecution to explain his reasons for the strike, the prosecutor explained as follows: I’m striking Mr. Cutler because of his lack of education [and] the fact that he’s unemployed. In particular, . . . he said that he was trying to get a high school diploma. His form indicated that he only had 3 years of education, and I think he was talking about grade school. If he has 3 years of high school, we don’t know. Thereason is because lack of education. Tr. of Trial Proceedings at I-143. The district court determined that these were legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons for striking a potential juror and overruled the Batson challenge. When reviewing a district court’s determination that a peremptory challenge was not motivated by racial discrimination, we will uphold that determination unless it was clearly erroneous. United States v. Jones, 224 F.3d 621, 624 (7th Cir. 2000). Peremptory strikes may be made for a variety of reasons, so long as they are not race based, United States v. Smallwood, 188 F.3d 905, 915 (7th Cir. 1999), and lack of education is an acknowledged, non-discriminatory reason for striking a juror, see United States v. Marin, 7 F.3d 679, 686-87 (7th Cir. 1993) (The attainment of a certain educational level has been accepted by numerous circuits as a raceneutral criterion for exercising a peremptory challenge under the Batson mandate, and, as far as we can determine, has been rejected by none.). Alanis has not presented the court with evidence that the prosecution’s reasons were pretextual. See Jones, 224 F.3d at 624 (noting that the opponent of the strike bears the burden of proving racial discrimination) (citing Purkett v. Elem, 514 U.S. 765, 768, 115 S. Ct. 1769, 131 L. Ed. 2d 834 (1995)). We thus find that the district court’s ruling, determining that the prosecution’s reasons were non- discriminatory, was not clearly erroneous.