Court Opinion

ID: 9488965
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:01:05.296098+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:13.210784
License: Public Domain

BRIGHT, Circuit Judge,
concurring separately.
I write separately to emphasize the crucial importance of the trial judge’s fact finding function as it relates to the Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), jurisprudence. Preliminarily, it is well to recall the underpinnings for limiting peremptory strikes in jury selection. In Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965), a case preceding Batson, the United States Supreme Court recognized that “a State’s purposeful or deliberate denial to Negroes on account of race of participation as jurors in the administration of justice violates the Equal Protection Clause.” Id. at 203-204, 85 S.Ct. at 826. The Batson Court reaffirmed that principle.
Additionally, the Court in Batson stated:
*375The harm from discriminatory jury selection extends beyond that inflicted on the defendant and the excluded juror to touch the entire community. Selection procedures that purposefully exclude black persons from juries undermine public confidence in the fairness of our system of justice____ Discrimination within the judicial system is most pernicious because it is ‘a stimulant to that race prejudice which is an impediment to securing to [black citizens] that equal justice which the law aims to secure to all others.’ Strauder [v. West Virginia], 100 U.S. [303], 308 [25 L.Ed. 664] (1880).
Id. at 87-88,106 S.Ct. at 1718.
Under Batson, once the defendant makes a prima facie case the prosecutor (or proponent of the peremptory strike) must articulate a neutral explanation relating to the case to be tried. Id. at 98, 106 S.Ct. at 1723-24. That articulation must be “clear and reasonably specific”. See, id. at 98 n. 20, 106 S.Ct. at 1724 n. 20. In the context of an objection to a peremptory strike, the court will usually act with promptness, often at a bench conference outside the hearing of the jury.
The showing of pretext usually will not call for any evidence, but rather argument and reference to the voir dire of the jury. The reason offered by the prosecutor or proponent of the strike need not be accepted by the court at stage three (pretext) of the proceeding.
As observed in Purkett v. Elem, — U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 1769, 131 L.Ed.2d 834 (1995), impossible, fantastic, silly or superstitious justifications may and probably will be found pretextual. Id. at -, 115 S.Ct. at 1771.
Where, as in this case, the proponent of the strikes utilizes all seven peremptory challenges to strike African-Americans from the jury, a fact finder could be justified in rejecting, as pretextual at stage three of the proceedings, the race neutral reasons offered by the prosecutor. Moreover, utilizing all peremptory challenges against minority persons presumptively strikes at the very heart of the Batson rule — that a person shall not be deprived by reasons of race of the privileges and obligations of citizenship in serving as a juror.
The seven African-Americans who were stricken may well have believed that race underlay their rejection, regardless of the prosecutor’s reasons provided to the trial judge. When a prosecutor utilizes all peremptory strikes against only African-American citizens, the reasons offered will often carry a hollow sound of pretext, and a trial judge might look at these reasons with a jaundiced eye and reject them as pretextual.
However, the state trial judge here honored the strikes in this case and the Missouri courts approved of that action as not violative of Batson. In a habeas case, the federal courts must presume such findings to be correct if there is support in the record. And, as noted by the opinion of the majority, some evidence does support the strikes. I would add, however, that a contrary finding by the trial judge could have been easily justified in the circumstances of this case.