Court Opinion

ID: 9613893
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:20:46.380872+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:32.897852
License: Public Domain

ROVNER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The district court in this case properly analyzed the Batson issue, and the majority’s treatment of that district court opinion is so dismissive of the district court that I must write separately to express my disagreement. The majority is only able to reverse the district court by: (1) declaring that the district court was so unaware of the record before it that deference to its decision is no longer due; and (2) usurping the role of the district court by refusing to remand the case and instead deciding the issue for ourselves. There is no basis for either conclusion. The majority opinion mischaracterizes the district court opinion in concluding that the district court failed to consider all of the factors, and the opinion as a whole evidences a disregard for the district court’s analysis and its role. Accordingly, I dissent.
The majority recognizes that it is the role of the district court at step three of the Batson inquiry to evaluate the credibility of the race-neutral explanation and that the role is so significant that we will not overturn those findings unless they are clearly erroneous. Rice v. Collins, 546 U.S. 333, 338, 126 S.Ct. 969, 163 L.Ed.2d 824 (2006). The majority end-runs that deferential review by stating that the district court opinion incorrectly recounted much of the record, failed to note material portions, and applied a “litmus test” to the Batson issue which exclusively focused on the factors of white collar experience and college education. Majority Op. at 713-14. By holding that the district court did not factor in material portions of the record, the majority concludes that the district court is owed no deference in its application of Batson. The majority then goes one step further, and declines to remand the case to allow the district court to consider the record in its entirety, instead concluding that the record presents only one plausible conclusion, which is that no Batson violation is present.
It is true that the district court focused predominantly on two factors — work experience and ability to understand the case— in evaluating whether the race-neutral explanations were pretextual. That focus was appropriate because the government quite clearly identified those factors as the primary reasons for its challenges. Indeed, the government in the district court devoted the first 12 pages of its Government’s Statement of Reasons (hereinafter “Govt. Reasons”) to explaining why classifications based on work experience and ability to understand the case are race-neutral and are proper factors for exercising the peremptory challenges. It is not *722until later in its argument that the government even explored other related factors. In fact, the government in its arguments to the district court repeatedly identified those two factors as predominant, beginning with a section entitled “The Government’s General Approach to Striking Jurors,” in which the government stated:
there were two factors that the government considered to be particularly significant in this case: (1) the juror’s work experience; and (2) the juror’s ability to understand the government’s case. As a general rule, the government struck prospective jurors who lacked white collar work experience and who demonstrated the least ability to comprehend the government’s case. The importance of those two factors to the government reflected the nature of the case ...
Govt. Reasons at 2-3. The critical importance of those factors was then developed at length, and repeatedly emphasized. In fact, the government declared that “virtually all of the government’s strikes are readily explained by the jurors’ work experience and ability to understand the case.” Government’s Reply to Defendant’s Response to Government’s Statement of Reasons (hereinafter “Govt’s Reply”) at 12. Regarding the second factor — the ability to understand the case — the government explicitly tied that to the level of education, declaring: “The government assumed that people with college degrees would be more likely to understand all the nuance of the government’s case than people who had less education. Accordingly, as a general rule, the government looked to strike individuals who lacked a college degree.” Govt. Reasons at 7.
The district court accurately characterized the government’s arguments. The court noted that the government considered to be “particularly significant” the factors of work experience and the juror’s ability to understand the government’s case. The court in fact quoted the government’s own rationale for use of its peremp-tories and its explanation of those two factors. Regarding the jurors’ ability to understand the case, the court quoted the above language concerning the relevance of a college education, and also noted the significant weight the government placed on mistakes jurors made in written and oral responses during voir dire as illuminating the potential jurors’ ability to understand the case. The district court properly determined that those reasons provided by the government were race-neutral, but concluded that those factors were not what actually motivated its peremptory challenges.
Thus, the district court appropriately focused on the factors identified by the government as those driving its peremptory challenges. The majority’s characterization of that as a “litmus test” that blinded the district court to any other explanations is simply inaccurate. It is disingenuous to fault the district court for focusing on those factors when it was the government that argued to the district court that “virtually all of the government’s strikes are readily explained by the jurors’ work experience and ability to understand the case.” Govt’s Reply at 12. The district court simply quoted the government’s own rationale. Nor was the district court unaware of the other factors considered. The district court recognized the government’s argument that among those unacceptable jurors lacking college education and white collar experience, the government looked to other factors to decide which jurors were the least desirable. That is because the government did not have enough peremptory challenges to eliminate all of the jurors in that undesirable pool. See Govt's Reply at 7 (“as 17 jurors lacked a college degree and 9 jurors had no white collar experience, it would have been im*723possible for the government to strike all the jurors in either category with its 7 peremptory challenges. As a result, the government had to consider additional factors among the jurors who lacked a college degree and/or white collar experience to determine its strikes.”)
Contrary to the majority’s characterization, the district court in fact acknowledged that the government had identified those other factors as a means to rank the potential jurors in that undesirable pool, ostensibly so that the government could eliminate the least desirable among them. In other words, the work experience and ability to understand were the primary factors in determining a pool of potential jurors who would all be undesirable to the government. In choosing how to allocate the limited number of peremptory challenges among those undesirable jurors, the government argued that it looked to secondary factors. But the court held that those other factors were ultimately irrelevant, because the numbers made it clear that the government was not doing what it said. The government was not credible in stating that it tried to eliminate the potential jurors who lacked the ability to understand the case and white collar experience. There were eleven jurors who both lacked white collar work experience and either lacked a college degree or allegedly showed confusion on the written and oral voir dire, six of whom were Caucasian and five of whom were African-American or Hispanic-American. The government eliminated only five of them, despite having seven peremptory challenges available to it. If, as it claimed, the government exercised its challenges so as to remove as many potential jurors as possible who lacked white collar experience and the ability to understand the case, then it would have eliminated seven within that group. No claim is made that strategy or other factors required it to retain some peremptory challenges. Nor was the government credible in stating that it looked to other factors to rank the jurors within that group so as to best allocate its challenges among those undesirable potential jurors. If it had, then the bottom seven would have been eliminated. Instead, only five challenges were made to that group that the government had already identified as undesirable, and all five were against minority jurors, eliminating every minority within that group. The government — despite identifying white collar experience and college education as the most significant factors — did not exercise peremptory challenges against a single one of the six Caucasian prospective jurors who both lacked white collar experience and exhibited an inability to understand the case. Instead, it used one of the two remaining peremptories on an Asian-American potential juror who possessed both white collar experience and a college education, and it left its remaining peremptory challenge unused, allowing on the jury the potential Caucasian jurors who lacked both the white collar experience and the ability to understand the case that the government had deemed so critical.
Far from being unaware of the government’s arguments regarding the other factors, the district court was aware of them, but stated that they were irrelevant because the government could not explain why it had failed to use the remaining peremptory on any Caucasian member of that undesirable potential juror group. It was not clearly erroneous for the district court to determine that if those factors were so critical as to explain “virtually all of the government’s strikes,” it would have at least exercised its unused peremptory challenges against one of the white jurors who lacked white collar experience and the ability to understand the case, instead of eliminating only the minority jurors so sit*724uated and leaving the peremptory challenge unused. Thus, there is absolutely no evidence that the court was unaware of, or failed to consider, the record as a whole, or the government’s arguments as a whole. In fact, the district court explicitly acknowledged those other factors. The majority clearly would have not reached the same conclusion, but such a difference of opinion is not a basis for reversal. Easley v. Cromartie, 532 U.S. 234, 242, 121 S.Ct. 1452, 149 L.Ed.2d 430 (2001); Anderson v. Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 573, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985). Where, as here, the district court properly considered the record and the law as a whole, the district court’s decision must be affirmed unless clearly erroneous. The majority cannot avoid that standard by mischarac-terizing the district court’s opinion and impugning the court. Because the district court properly identified , the government’s arguments and addressed them in light of the applicable law, it is entitled to deference and should be affirmed.
In fact, even under its non-deferential review, there is no support for the majority’s determination that the record yields only one plausible conclusion in the Batson challenge. The extensive, subjective weighing of factors, and the conclusion regarding which are important and which are not, that constitutes the bulk of the majority opinion, itself reveals the fallacy of any such argument of inevitability. The majority attempts to lend an aura of objectivity to the process' by premising the challenges on the allegedly race-neutral grading system used by the prosecutor, in which some potential minority jurors received high grades and some potential white jurors received low grades. The majority provides a chart in the Appendix that sets forth those grades to purportedly demonstrate that the government’s strikes were based on its race-neutral grading system.
A glance at that chart belies any such easy conclusion. Even assuming, as the majority does, that the grading was done in a race-neutral manner, the chart reveals that the government allowed no one on the jury who scored below a B-, and did not challenge anyone who scored a B or above. For those that scored a B-, however, the result was anything but race-neutral. Five jurors received a rating of B-, three of whom were white and two of whom were African-American. One of those white jurors was excused for cause. Of the potential jurors remaining who had a B grade, the two white candidates were seated as jurors, and the two African-American candidates were dismissed as a result of government peremptory challenges. That is hardly evidence of racially-neutral use of peremptory challenges. Nor did the government have to make such a choice at all. As the district court points out, the government retained an unused peremptory challenge, and thus could have excluded at least one of the remaining jurors graded B-, yet it chose to challenge only the minority jurors with that grade. Tellingly, all of those prospective jurors rated Blacked both white collar experience and a college degree (although one white prospective juror was attending college), and the government nevertheless exercised its peremptories to exclude the minority candidates, but allowed the white prospective jurors to serve despite retaining an unused peremptory challenge. Although the majority attempts to neutralize that determination with the listing of purported positive and negative factors for the government, the grade itself presumably reflects the government’s own weighing of those factors. It remains that among those rated a B-, the available white candidates were allowed to serve and the government used peremptory challenges to *725eliminate both African-American candidates.
Thus, even using the purportedly neutral grading system that the majority identifies, it does not indicate race-neutrality, and certainly does not establish it to such a degree that we could state that the record presents only one plausible conclusion. The case at a minimum should have been remanded to the district court if the majority believed that the court did not apply the proper legal standard, because the convoluted facts of this case do not lend themselves to a decision by an appellate court of the Batson issue as a matter of law. The district court — and more importantly, the defendant — deserved better than that, however, as the district court properly analyzed the record before it. Applying the proper standard of deferential review, the decision of the district court should have been affirmed outright. For that reason, I dissent.
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Note:
The district court first considered challenges for causes. After determining the jurors that would be excused for cause, the district court gave each side 15 minutes to consider their peremptory challenges. The government was given seven peremptory challenges and the defendant was given eleven peremptory challenges. Both sides provided their peremptory challenges on a written piece of paper submitted to the district court. The district court noted that both sides exercised a peremptory challenge on Juror 1 and that the government had failed to exercise all of its challenges. Consequently, the district court asked the government if it wanted to exercise another challenge. The government selected Juror 21. Juror 40 was excused because the court had already seated a full complement of 12 jurors and two alternates.