Court Opinion

ID: 9646536
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:02:23.354639+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:39.123550
License: Public Domain

O’HERN, J.,
concurring.
Except for the primacy accorded to the State Constitution, I concur in the opinion and judgment of the Court. We are not required in this case, as we were in State v. Hunt, 91 N.J. 338, 345 (1982), to inquire whether “[sjound policy reasons” occasion us to look to the New Jersey Constitution as an independent state ground for decision.
Although the United States Supreme Court’s recent decision in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 US.-, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), was rooted in Equal Protection Clause analysis, the Court’s overriding emphasis on the central position the jury *546occupies in our system of justice was consistent with this Court’s analysis:
“The very idea of a jury is a body ... composed of the peers or equals of the person whose rights it is selected or summoned to determine; that is, of his neighbors, fellows, associates, persons having the same legal status in society as that which he holds.” [Id. at-, 106 S.Ct. at 1717, 90 L.Ed.2d at 80-81 (quoting Strauder v. West Virginia, 10 Otto 303, 308, 100 U.S. 303, 308, 25 L.Ed. 664, 666 (1880)).]
The language quoted by the Court in Batson encompasses the same fundamental principle that this Court finds in paragraphs 5, 9 and 10 of Article I of the New Jersey Constitution:
This right to trial by an impartial jury, in our heterogeneous society where a defendant’s “peers” include members of many diverse groups, entails the right to trial by a jury drawn from a representative cross-section of the community. [Ante at 524.]
Hence, I see no occasion to emphasize the independent state source of our decision. The unquestioned subordination of a federal constitutional guarantee of such dimension does not accord with my view of constitutional jurisprudence.