Court Opinion

ID: 9763396
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:44:07.301561+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:57:17.635651
License: Public Domain

VANCE, Justice,
dissenting.
The central issue in deciding Walker’s Batson point is: After the complaining party has made a prima facie case of discrimination in the exercise of peremptory strikes, who bears the burden of showing that the striking party’s race-neutral reasons were or were not pretextual? In other words, understanding that a prima facie case of discrimination has been made, will we require that the party who exercised the strikes develop a record that supports the court’s ruling that its explanations were race neutral or will we require that the complaining party develop a record that shows that the strikes were in fact discriminatory. Because I believe that Emerson v. State has already answered that question, I respectfully dissent. Emerson v. State 851 S.W.2d 269 (Tex.Crim.App.1993).
*570The majority, after finding that Walker made a prima facie case of discrimination, relies on Vargas v. State to hold that nothing in the record suggests that the prosecutor’s explanations for his strikes were pre-textual. See Vargas v. State, 838 S.W.2d 552 (Tex.Crim.App.1992). Emerson, decided by a unanimous Court after Vargas, dictates a contrary result. See Emerson, 851 S.W.2d at 273-74.
After a party gives non-discriminatory reasons for striking prospective minority jurors from the venire, the trial judge must “determine whether these facially neutral explanations are contrived to avoid admitting acts of discrimination.” Id. at 273. “The trial judge may not, however, merely accept the specific reasons given by the prosecutor at face value.” Id.
Although involving a claim of disparate treatment that the Court upheld, Emerson also involved a prosecutor’s failure to question a prospective juror about characteristics that he claimed that the juror, as a member of a group, possessed. Id. The Court held that, without specific questions having been directed to the panel or to the individual juror showing that the juror in question (an unemployed college teaching assistant) possessed the characteristic (being a liberal) attributed to the group, the record being otherwise silent, the explanations were “insufficient as a matter of law to rebut appellant’s prima facie showing of racial discrimination in the jury selection process.” Id. at 274.
Here, the prosecutor did not ask either Beasley or Hall any question designed to justify his claim that either of them, being “obese,” would “tend to be more lenient on punishment.” Thus, he did not show that the trait that he ascribed to “obese” persons applied to either juror. Nor did he ask any question of either juror that would support his striking them because both had relatives that his office had prosecuted. The record is silent about the identities of the relatives, the crimes for which they were prosecuted, the degree of relationship between the jurors and those relations, the nature of their personal relationship, or the outcome of the prosecutions. Thus, the prosecutor did not establish that either juror possessed any trait or had any feeling, arising out of the prosecution of a relative, that would justify his explanation that he struck them because they were relatives of persons accused of crimes.
In short, the State “applied a group bias without inquiring whether it applied to [Beasley or Hall] specifically.” See id. Because neither was shown to have the characteristics ascribed, the trial court’s action in holding that the State rebutted the prima facie case is not supported by the record, cannot be accorded deference, and is therefore clear error. See id.; Vargas, 838 S.W.2d at 554 (adopting the “clear error standard of review”).
Emerson does not dictate that the reasons given by the prosecutor for its strikes against Beasley and Hall would, under all circumstances, be pretextual. It does say that the trial court’s decision must be based on information in the record; otherwise, the record does not support the finding. Fairly read, it requires that the party attempting to explain the challenged strikes bears the burden of seeing that the record is sufficient to support its explanations for those strikes. Emerson 851 S.W.2d at 273. It does not, to my mind, place the burden of refuting unsupported explanations on the complaining party, who has already made a prima facie showing of discrimination.
The discriminatory strike of even one prospective juror invalidates the entire jury selection process. Id. at 274. Because the State did not develop a record sufficient to support its race-neutral reasons for striking Beasley and Hall, I would reverse the judgment and remand the cause for a new trial.1

. Emerson also recognizes that the legitimacy of race-neutral explanations for the use of peremp*571tory strikes can be weighed against the “Keeton factors." Emerson, 851 S.W.2d at 273; Keeton v. State, 749 S.W.2d 861, 868 (Tex.Crim.App. 1988). At least half of the Keeton factors are present in this case, i.e., a pattern of strikes against minority jurors (6 of 10); a lack of questions to Beasley and Hall; and the dismissal of most minority jurors (all but one).