Court Opinion

ID: 9742330
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:10:57.108334+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:31.156664
License: Public Domain

PAGE, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I do so because the court’s Batson analysis will again, as it has in the past,1 have a negative impact on the ability of people of color to vindicate their Fourteenth Amendment right to participate in jury service. See State v. Reiners, 664 N.W.2d 826, 831 (Minn.2003). In this case, the court allows a state to strike a prospective juror who, having personally been the victim of discrimination based on her appearance, expressed anger at the idea that her fellow prospective jurors would form negative opinions about the defendant based solely on his appearance — -a fact extraneous and irrelevant to the issues to be decided in the case.
During questioning by defense counsel, prospective juror 9 (Juror 9) indicated that because she was a minority people made judgments about her entirely based on her appearance and that those experiences made her mad and still make her mad. When defense counsel informed Juror 9 that other veniremembers had commented on Bailey’s appearance in their juror questionnaires and asked Juror 9 what she thought about such comments, Juror 9 responded that such comments also made her mad. In so responding, Juror 9 elaborated, “Like I’ve said I’ve went through it. People would see me and/or see me and my twin sister and, you know, either yell things or put us down without even knowing us. Just going by the color of our skin or that [sic] the fact that they knew that we were minorities.” When questioned by the state, Juror 9 affirmed her earlier statement that such comments made her mad. Because of Juror 9’s reaction to the other veniremembers’ discriminatory view of Bailey based solely on Bailey’s appearance, the state exercised a peremptory strike against Juror 9 asserting that she demonstrated a kinship with Bailey.
In my view, the reason the state gave for striking Juror 9 was neither legitimate nor race-neutral. In essence, the state struck Juror 9 because, having been discriminated against based solely on the col- or of her skin, that is, her appearance, she opposes discrimination against others, including discrimination against Bailey because of his appearance, which is a superficial and irrelevant criterion. But, “[a]n avowed justification that has a significant disproportionate impact will rarely qualify as a legitimate, race-neutral reason sufficient to rebut the prima facie case because disparate impact is itself evidence of discriminatory purpose.” Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S. 352, 376-77, 111 S.Ct. 1859, 114 L.Ed.2d 395 (1991) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (citing Arlington Heights v. Metro. Hous. Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 265-66, 97 S.Ct. 555, 50 L.Ed.2d 450 (1977); Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 242, 96 S.Ct. 2040, 48 L.Ed.2d 597 (1976)). People who have been discriminated against have a *625heightened sense of and lower tolerance for discriminatory conduct. Thus, allowing the state to strike prospective jurors who have been victims of discrimination based solely on their appearances, and who oppose discrimination against others on that basis, will have a “significant disproportionate impact” on people of color.
I would also note that, just because Juror 9 is angered by and opposes unfair discrimination, it does not automatically follow that she developed a “kinship” with Bailey.
If we allow the state to strike prospective jurors simply because those jurors have been discriminated against based on their appearances and because they oppose such conduct on the part of others, we allow the state to further diminish the Fourteenth Amendment right people of color have to participate in jury service. Because I conclude that the state violated Juror 9’s Fourteenth Amendment right to participate in jury service, and because I conclude that the violation was structural error, I would reverse Bailey’s conviction and remand for a new trial.

. See, e.g., State v. Reiners, 664 N.W.2d 826, 835-41 (Minn.2003) (Page, J., dissenting); State v. Taylor, 650 N.W.2d 190, 208-12 (Minn.2002) (Page, J., concurring in part, dissenting in part); State v. Gaitan, 536 N.W.2d 11, 18-20 (Minn.1995) (Page, J., dissenting).