Court Opinion

ID: 9681464
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:50:58.710968+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:34.109809
License: Public Domain

LEVY, Justice,
concurring.
In concurring with the result reached by the majority, I feel compelled to point out an injustice in the law as it now stands.
Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965), has established the necessary proof of racially motivated peremptory strikes to be extraordinarily demanding and possibly insurmountable, to the extent that many legal scholars assert that this established standard perpetuates both systematic exclusion of blacks (and perhaps other identifiable ethnic groups) from the judicial process and severely inhibits fair and impartial trials, thereby offending the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Constitution of the United States. See, Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 328 U.S. 217, 66 S.Ct. 984, 90 L.Ed. 1181 (1946); Smith v. Texas, 311 U.S. 128, 61 S.Ct. 164, 85 L.Ed. 84 (1940); The Jury System: New Methods for Reducing Prejudice (National Jury Project 1975) pp. 6, 10-11. Although the prohibitions of the Equal Protection Clause go no further than the “invidious” discrimination, Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, 348 U.S. 483, 489, 75 S.Ct. 461, 465, 99 L.Ed. 563 (1955), our superior courts have said that that point has not yet been reached, or at least that the proof offered in each case has not been sufficient. It would appear that, in the conflict between this Clause and the procedural right of the prosecutor to strike venire members peremptorily, the constitu*91tional guarantee has been relegated to a subordinate position — at least for now.
Appellant’s argument that Swain and its progeny should be overruled or reinterpreted in order to allow a criminal defendant to make a prima facie case of unconstitutional discrimination by the State in its peremptory strikes — by showing that the prosecutor struck, in a single case, every member of a minority group on the venire panel — is not without justification. Where the prosecutor strikes all members of the venire who are members of a recognizable ethnic group, logic would certainly allow, if not require, the presumption to arise that such striking amounts to systematic exclusion of that group, even if on an ad hoc basis, and thereby shift the burden to the prosecutor, upon timely objection, to justify his action on non-racial grounds or have the jury panel quashed. See Willis v. Zant, 720 F.2d 1212 (11th Cir.1983). Reliance on the good faith of a prosecutor entrusted with participating in the selection of jurors for the administration of criminal justice is not in itself an investiture of discriminatory power offensive to due process. Representing as it does a living principle, “due process” is not confined within a permanent catalog of what may at a given time be deemed the limits or the essentials of fundamental rights. The right of a prosecutor to peremptory challenges is so established today that it leads to the easy assumption that it is fundamental to the protection of life and liberty and therefore a necessary ingredient of due process of law. But we should not confuse the familiar with the necessary. “Due Process” is, perhaps, the least frozen concept of our law, the least confined to history, and the most absorptive of powerful social standards of a progressive society.
As an intermediate court, however, we are bound to follow the rules and precedent enunciated by the United States Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Tex.Code Crim.P.Ann. art. 4.04, sec. 2 (Vernon Supp.1985). Those courts have established the test for proving that venire members were struck solely for racial reasons, and appellant in the case at bar has not met his burden of statistical or other proof on that issue. The proof required by Swain and its progeny is indeed demanding, but not theoretically impossible. I must therefore reluctantly agree that appellant’s first ground of error must be overruled.
Publish. Tex.R.Crim.App. P. 207.