Court Opinion

ID: 9795793
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:39:03.671969+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:37:46.537950
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J.
I dissent. I would affirm the Court of Appeal’s judgment, which found that the trial court committed reversible error when it denied a *930defense motion asserting that the prosecutor engaged in purposeful discrimination when he used peremptory challenges to strike two Hispanic women from the jury. The Court of Appeal concluded that the trial court’s ruling violated both the federal Constitution as construed by the United States Supreme Court in Batson v. Kentucky (1986) 476 U.S. 79 [90 L.Ed.2d 69, 106 S.Ct. 1712] (Batson) and the California Constitution as construed by this court in People v. Wheeler (1978) 22 Cal.3d 258 [148 Cal.Rptr. 890, 583 P.2d 748] (Wheeler).
The majority’s decision reversing the Court of Appeal undermines the right of Hispanics to sit on juries in California state courts and the right of criminal defendants to jury-selection procedures free of purposeful discrimination against Hispanic prospective jurors. Here, the prosecutor said he struck a Hispanic woman from the jury because she was insufficiently educated and because she was not paying attention. Although the defense disputed both of these factual assertions, the trial court denied the defendants’ Batson/Wheeler motion without questioning the prosecutor, without making particularized findings, and by misstating the proper legal standard. Brushing all this aside, the majority indulges a presumption that both the prosecutor and the trial court acted properly, thereby adopting a standard of appellate review that effectively insulates discriminatory strikes from meaningful scrutiny at both the trial and appellate stages. For the reasons that follow, I disagree.
The use of peremptory challenges to eliminate prospective jurors because of group bias—that is, bias based on the juror’s race, gender, ethnic background, or similar cognizable characteristic—is prohibited by the federal Constitution (Powers v. Ohio (1991) 499 U.S. 400, 409 [113 L.Ed.2d 411, 111 S.Ct. 1364]; Batson, supra, 476 U.S. at p. 89) and by the California Constitution (Wheeler, supra, 22 Cal.3d at pp. 276-277). A defendant claiming a prosecutor has exercised peremptory challenges because of group bias must make a timely objection and establish a prima facie case of prohibited discrimination. (People v. McDermott (2002) 28 Cal.4th 946, 969 [123 Cal.Rptr.2d 654, 51 P.3d 874].)
The United States Supreme Court has explained the three-step procedure a trial court must follow in ruling on a Batson motion; “[O]nce the opponent of a peremptory challenge has made out a prima facie case of racial discrimination (step one), the burden of production shifts to the proponent of the strike to come forward with a race-neutral explanation (step two). If a race-neutral explanation is tendered, the trial court must then decide (step three) whether the opponent of the strike has proved purposeful racial discrimination.” (Purkett v. Elem (1995) 514 U.S. 765, 767 [131 L.Ed.2d 834, 115 S.Ct. 1769].)
*931Here, in step one, the trial court found that the defense had made a prima facie case of improper discrimination, and the court asked the prosecutor to explain his peremptory challenges against the two Hispanic jurors. In step two, the prosecutor said he excused one of them, Elizabeth G., “because she was [a] customer service representative” and “[i]n terms of that, we felt she did not have enough educational experience” and because “it seemed like she was not paying attention to the proceedings and the People felt that she was not involved in the process.” These reasons are facially neutral as to Hispanic ancestry, as the trial court recognized by saying: “I accept those reasons as being not based upon race or ethnicity.”
The issue here concerns step three, whether the defense “proved purposeful racial discrimination.” (Purkett v. Elem, supra, 514 U.S. at p. 767.) As the United States Supreme Court has said, “the critical question in determining whether a [party] has proved purposeful discrimination at step three is the persuasiveness of the prosecutor’s justification for his peremptory strike.” (Miller-El v. Cockrell (2003) 537 U.S. 322, [154 L.Ed.2d 931, 123 S.Ct. 1029]; see also People v. Alvarez (1996) 14 Cal.4th 155, 196 [58 Cal.Rptr.2d 385, 926 P.2d 365] [stating that the issue is “whether the prosecutor acted with the prohibited intent,” which in turn depends on “whether the prosecutor’s customary denial of such intent is true”].) The high court added that, “[a]t this stage, ‘implausible or fantastic justifications may (and probably will) be found to be pretexts for purposeful discrimination.’ ” (Miller-El v. Cockrell, supra, at p. 339 [123 S.Ct. at p. 1040].)
As the majority admits, the prosecutor’s explanation that he challenged Elizabeth G. because her occupation as a sales representative showed inadequate education is “of questionable persuasiveness” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 924) and “a dubious notion” (id. at p. 925). But the majority refuses to acknowledge that by offering this implausible justification, the prosecutor triggered specific duties that this court has imposed on trial courts: first, to question the prosecutor to determine whether the offered justification, though implausible, was genuine rather than a pretext for purposeful discrimination, and, second, to make particularized findings resolving this credibility issue.
As this court explained in People v. Fuentes (1991) 54 Cal.3d 707 [286 Cal.Rptr. 792, 818 P.2d 75] (Fuentes) and reemphasized in People v. Silva (2001) 25 Cal.4th 345 [106 Cal.Rptr.2d 93, 21 P.3d 769] (Silva), a trial court, when it rules on a Batson/Wheeler motion, must make a sincere and reasoned effort to evaluate the credibility of a prosecutor’s explanation for using peremptory challenges against prospective jurors of a particular race or other cognizable group (Silva, supra, at p. 386; Fuentes, supra, at p. 720), and the trial court should make express, particularized findings as to each juror that the prosecutor has challenged and each reason that the prosecutor has offered *932(Silva, supra, at pp. 385-386; Fuentes, supra, at p. 716, fn. 5). When the trial court has not conducted any inquiry and has not made any particularized findings, but the prosecutor’s explanations are both plausible and supported by the record, this court has not found reversible error in the denial of the defense motion. (Silva, supra, at p. 386.) But when, as here, the prosecutor has given a highly implausible reason for striking a prospective juror, and the trial court has not conducted any meaningful inquiry or made any particularized findings, an appellate court cannot indulge a presumption, belied by the record, that the trial court discharged its duty to make a sincere and reasoned effort to evaluate the credibility of the.prosecutor’s explanation. (See Silva, supra, at p. 386.) In this situation, as the Court of Appeal correctly held, an appellate court must treat the unexplained denial of the defense motion as reversible error.
The prosecutor’s second reason for striking Elizabeth G.—that she was not paying attention—is equally problematic. As the Court of Appeal correctly observed, and as the majority does not dispute, nothing in Elizabeth G.’s responses, nor anything else in the appellate record, indicated she was not paying attention. Of course, her demeanor could have conveyed the impression that she was not paying attention, and body language of that sort can be a proper basis for peremptory challenge. (Fuentes, supra, 54 Cal.3d at pp. 714-715.) But in the trial court the defense directly challenged the prosecutor’s assertion, saying “[t]here was nothing in her responses or her demeanor that justified] just excusing her . . . .” This contrary assertion created a factual dispute for the trial court to resolve. The court could easily have done so by saying whether its own observations of Elizabeth G. confirmed or refuted the prosecutor’s claim that she had not been paying attention. But the trial court did not resolve the dispute in this way, nor did the court question the prosecutor to determine, if possible, what particular aspect of Elizabeth G.’s demeanor may have caused the prosecutor to conclude, if he actually did, that she was not paying attention.
Rather than resolving the factual dispute by an express finding or by a focused inquiry, the trial court attempted to respond to another aspect of the defense argument. Defense counsel had asserted that because Elizabeth G. had ties to persons in law enforcement (specifically, friends in the Porterville Police Department and a brother who worked for the California Department of Corrections), she had characteristics normally considered favorable to the prosecution. Noting that the defense itself had exercised a peremptory challenge against a Hispanic juror named Carolyn G., the trial court addressed defense counsel with these words: “[Yjou argued that even a person who the People should want to have on, namely law enforcement background may still kick off because of being Hispanic. I’m just pointing out that *933[Carolyn G.] was another person that is Hispanic background but they did not kick off and I believe her background was that she had been the one who had been kidnapped.”
The majority asserts: “We are confident the trial court’s intended point was not that the defense had also excused Carolyn G., a Hispanic prospective juror, which might constitute error under People v. Snow [1987] 44 Cal.3d [216], 225 [242 Cal.Rptr. 477, 746 P.2d 452], but rather that the prosecutor had not sought to peremptorily challenge her.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 928.) But there was no way to determine whether the prosecutor would have challenged Carolyn G. had the defense not done so first, and also, as defense counsel tried to explain, the prosecutor could have thought that Carolyn G.’s experience as a crime victim would make her favor the prosecution, thus outweighing what the prosecutor may have viewed as the undesirable fact of her Hispanic heritage. Thus, the discussion about Prospective Juror Carolyn G. did nothing to address the central issue before the trial court, which was the credibility of the reasons the prosecutor had given for striking Elizabeth G. The trial court’s willingness to engage in this pointless digression can only undermine an appellate court’s confidence that the trial court understood and discharged its duty.
Here again, an appellate court cannot indulge a presumption, belied by the record, that the trial court discharged its duty to make a sincere and reasoned effort to evaluate the credibility of the prosecutor’s explanation. (See Silva, supra, 25 Cal.4th at p. 386.)
Another of the trial court’s comments supplies yet another reason not to presume that the court correctly applied the teachings of this court and the United States Supreme Court. In denying the defense Batson/Wheeler motion, the trial court said: “I don’t find that there has been a violation of Wheeler and that the—there was not a systematic exclusion of a recognized ethnic group, i.e., Hispanics in this case.” (Italics added.)
But as this court has explained, a showing of systematic exclusion is not required to establish a Batson/Wheeler violation. “California law makes clear that a constitutional violation may arise even when only one of several members of a ‘cognizable’ group was improperly excluded.” (People v. Montiel (1993) 5 Cal.4th 877, 909 [21 Cal.Rptr.2d 705, 855 P.2d 1277], citing Fuentes, supra, 54 Cal.3d at pp. 714-715, fn. 4.) Accordingly, “a Wheeler violation does not require ‘systematic’ discrimination.” (People v. Arias (1996) 13 Cal.4th 92, 136 [51 Cal.Rptr.2d 770, 913 P.2d 980].)
The United States Supreme Court has also expressly rejected the notion that the defense must show systematic exclusion to establish a claim that the *934prosecution has purposefully discriminated in the exercise of peremptory challenges. In Batson, supra, 476 U.S. 79, the high court overruled its decision in Swain v. Alabama (1965) 380 U.S. 202 [13 L.Ed.2d 759, 85 S.Ct. 824], which had required a defendant to prove systematic discrimination in the sense of repeated exclusion of all members of a minority race in case after case. (Batson, supra, at p. 100, fn. 25.) In Batson, the court characterized this as a “crippling burden of proof’ that made peremptory challenges by the prosecution “largely immune from constitutional scrutiny.” (Batson, supra, at pp. 92-93.) Rejecting that approach, the court announced that “ ‘[a] single invidiously discriminatory governmental act’ is not ‘immunized by the absence of such discrimination in the making of other comparable decisions.’ ” (Id. at p. 95.) Thus, under Batson as under Wheeler, purposeful discrimination in the exercise of a single peremptory challenge is sufficient to establish a constitutional violation requiring reversal of a judgment based on a verdict of the improperly selected jury. (Silva, supra, 25 Cal.4th at p. 386.)
Here, the trial court’s invocation of the long-abandoned “systematic exclusion” standard raises serious doubts that the trial court correctly understood and applied the analysis required by Batson, supra, 476 U.S. 79, and Wheeler, supra, 22 Cal.3d 258. The court’s apparent reliance on this repudiated standard may explain its digression concerning Carolyn G. The court may well have reasoned that because the prosecution had not challenged all Hispanic jurors (although the jury ultimately selected included none), the defense had failed to establish systematic exclusion, and the court may have denied the motion on this erroneous reasoning.
Citing a footnote in Fuentes, the majority asserts that, in the Batson/Wheeler context, the term “systematic exclusion,” although “somewhat of a misnomer,” is “an acceptable shorthand phrase for denoting Wheeler error.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 927, fn. 8.) Fuentes says nothing of the sort. What this court said was that “[t]he term [systematic exclusion] is not apposite in the Wheeler context, for a single discriminatory exclusion may violate a defendant’s right to a representative jury.” (Fuentes, supra, 54 Cal.3d at p. 716, fn. 4.) In other words, the term “systematic exclusion,” far from being acceptable, is wrong and misleading, and this court disapproved its use in this context. In the 12 years since Fuentes, this court has never used the term “systematic exclusion” to describe the step three Batson/Wheeler inquiry. Nonetheless, trial courts and at least one Court of Appeal still use this inapposite term and, by this usage, are led to a mistaken understanding of the issue at stake. (See, e.g., People v. Robinson (2003) 110 Cal.App.4th 1196 [122 Cal.Rptr.3d 465], [erroneously stating that “[a] Wheeler motion challenges the selection of a jury, not the rejection of an individual juror; the issue is whether a pattern of systematic exclusion exists”].) The record shows that the trial court here made the very same, very basic mistake.
*935The majority relies on the general rule that reviewing courts give great deference to a trial court’s findings when ruling on a Batson/Wheeler motion because those findings “largely will turn on evaluation of credibility.” (Batson, supra, 476 U.S. at p. 98, fn. 21.) But a trial court’s credibility determination is entitled to deference only if the court made a sincere and reasoned effort to evaluate each stated justification as applied to each challenged juror. (People v. McDermott, supra, 28 Cal.4th at p. 970; People v. Jackson (1996) 13 Cal.4th 1164, 1197 [56 Cal.Rptr.2d 49, 920 P.2d 1254]; People v. Montiel, supra, 5 Cal.4th at p. 909.) Appellate deference is unwarranted where, as here, the appellate record supplies many reasons to doubt that the trial court even made a credibility determination, much less a determination resulting from a sincere and reasoned effort. (People v. Tapia (1994) 25 Cal.App.4th 984, 1016-1017 [30 Cal.Rptr.2d 851].) To summarize, the prosecutor’s reasons were inherently implausible (insufficient education) and disputed and unverifiable (inattention), yet the trial court (1) did not question the prosecutor or make any other relevant inquiry, (2) made no express findings relevant to credibility, (3) engaged in a pointless digression about a defense peremptory challenge, and (4) couched its ruling in terms of the repudiated “systematic exclusion” standard.
Both this court and the United States Supreme Court have established safeguards to prevent parties from using peremptory challenges to remove prospective jurors on the basis of group bias—that is, bias based on the juror’s race, gender, ethnic background, or similar cognizable characteristic. These safeguards include procedures at both the trial and appellate level. The majority’s holding here substantially weakens these safeguards and misapplies controlling precedent. Therefore, I dissent.
Werdegar, J., and Moreno, J., concurred.