Court Opinion

ID: 9484375
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:50:57.161091+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:50:12.100792
License: Public Domain

RYAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Three defendants are charged with attempting to murder a member of another race. The jury venire consists, by a large majority, of members of the victim’s race. The defendants contend that the prosecutor, *1352in exercising his peremptory challenges, has struck a disproportionate number of jurors who share the defendants’ race. Have the defendants articulated a Batson challenge? The majority says no.
Although conceding that “there is no doubt that Batson’s holding would control [the defendants’] eases if they were black and the excluded jurors were black,” majority op. at 1349, the majority concludes that because the defendants and the stricken jurors are white, they necessarily fall outside the purview of the constitutional protections enunciated by the Supreme Court in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). According to the majority, it was not until Powers v. Ohio, — U.S.-, 111 S.Ct. 1364, 113 L.Ed.2d 411 (1991), that the Supreme Court made “clear that a white defendant possesses an equal protection right to challenge a prosecutor’s racially discriminatory strikes.” Majority op. at 1350. Thus, according to the majority, “Powers announced a new rule extending Batson rights to white defendants,” majority op. at 1351,' and because a new rule may not be applied retroactively in a habeas corpus case, the defendants would not be entitled to relief even were they able to demonstrate that the prosecutor exercised his peremptory challenges in a racially discriminatory manner. Like the district court, however, I believe “that the Batson decision permitted a defendant to challenge the exclusion of potential jurors of his own race while Powers merely conferred third-party standing on defendants to raise the constitutional claims of jurors of races different from the defendants’,” majority op. at 1349, and that the defendants therefore had standing to raise their claims under Batson. I therefore dissent.
I.
The majority characterizes Powers as having “rendered meaningless Batson’s first requirement for a prima facie case of discrimination — that the defendant show that he is a member of a ‘cognizable racial group.’ ” Majority op. at 1350. According to the majority, “[i]f a member of the majority race can be considered ‘a member of a racial group capable of being singled out for differential treatment,’ the first requirement is automatically met by every defendant who objects to a prosecutor’s use of race-based peremptory challenges.” Majority op. at 1350. These statements reflect a dramatic misinterpretation both of Powers and of Batson’s concept of a cognizable racial group.
In Batson, the Supreme Court held that “the Constitution prohibits all forms of purposeful racial discrimination in selection of jurors,” Batson, 476 U.S. at 88, 106 S.Ct. at 1718, and that “the State’s privilege to strike individual jurors through peremptory challenges[ ] is subject to the commands of the Equal Protection Clause.” Id. at 89, 106 S.Ct. at 1719. To establish a violation of the equal protection clause, “the defendant first must show that he is a member of a cognizable racial group, ... and that the prosecutor has exercised peremptory challenges to remove from the venire members of the defendant’s race.” Id. at 96, 106 S.Ct. at 1723 (citation omitted). In Powers, on the other hand, the Court held that a defendant need not be a member of the excluded group in order to challenge racially discriminatory peremptory challenges, because the defendant could utilize the doctrine of third-party standing in order to champion the equal protection rights of the excluded jurors. Powers, — U.S. at -, 111 S.Ct. at 1373.
Thus, when a defendant is a member of the same racial group as the excluded jurors, he may raise a first-party Batson claim;1 when he is of a different racial group, he may raise a third-party Powers claim. In a case of first-party standing, the defendant essentially says, “I am a member of a certain racial group, and the prosecutor is discriminating against me by striking other members of that group from the jury out of a supposition that their membership in that group will disable them from serving as impartial jurors — that our common group membership will make *1353them automatically biased in my favor.”2 In a case of third-party standing, a defendant says, “The prosecutor is violating the rights of certain jurors by striking them from the jury out of a supposition that their race makes them incapable of being impartial jurors, and in so doing is harming the jurors by foreclosing an important opportunity to participate in civic life, and is casting doubt on the fairness of the criminal proceeding.”3
It is readily apparent that the defendants here are raising the first type of claim. It would only be necessary to look to Powers if the defendants were a) not members of a cognizable racial group, or b) not members of the same racial group as the excluded jurors. The latter is obviously not at issue here, and therefore the only question is whether whites constitute a cognizable racial group. Concluding that they do, I find it unnecessary to analyze Powers for whether it in fact stated a new rule. I view the majority’s conclusions regarding Powers as nondispositive of this ease.
II.
The majority appears to believe that the phrase “cognizable racial group” imports a minority racial group. The basis for such a conclusion escapes me. “Cognizable,” according to The Random House Dictionary of the English Language (Unabridged ed. 1981), means “capable of being perceived or known.” We can readily identify an individual as “white”; we recognize that individuals in our society unfortunately persist in making race-based judgments on grounds, inter alia, of black and white; and here, we are confronted with a case in which three white men were accused of attempting to murder a black man apparently because of his relationship with a white woman. All these circumstances convincingly demonstrate the extent to which the category “white” denotes, in this society, a single racial unit — in other words, a cognizable racial group.
The Batson Court’s use of the term is, moreover, consistent with this definition. Batson borrowed the phrase “cognizable racial group” from Castaneda v. Partida, 430 U.S. 482, 97 S.Ct. 1272, 51 L.Ed.2d 498 (1977), a case treating purposeful discrimination in the selection of the jury venire. Castaneda used the term to refer to a defendant who could “show that he is a member of a racial group capable of being singled out for differential treatment.” Batson, 476 U.S. at 94, 106 S.Ct. at 1722 (citing Castaneda, 430 U.S. at 494, 97 S.Ct. at 1280). This definition mandates that “cognizable racial group” be construed broadly
to include any racial or ethnic group in which membership is readily apparent to prosecutors because of physical appearance, surname, or other factors.... This broad test reflects the concern articulated in Batson that the jury selection process permits “ ‘those to discriminate who are of a mind to discriminate.’ ” 476 U.S. at 96, 106 S.Ct. at 1723 (quoting Avery v. Georgia, 345 U.S. 559, 562, 73 S.Ct. 891, 892, 97 L.Ed. 1244 (1953)). Obviously, this concern exists for any racial or ethnic group whose identity can be discerned by prosecutors either by means of physical appearance, such as blacks, whites, and Hispanics, or surname, such as Italian-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Polish-Américans, and Irish-Americans.
Brian J. Serr & Mark Maney, Criminal Law: Racism, Peremptory Challenges, and the Democratic Jury: The Jurisprudence of a Delicate Balance, 79 J.Crim.L. & Criminology 1, 25, 25 n. 145 (1988).
*1354This broad understanding of “cognizable racial group” is, on the whole, consistent with the treatment of the term by courts. The Eighth and Tenth Circuits have held that Native Americans constitute a cognizable racial group for Batson purposes. See, e.g., United States v. Bedonie, 913 F.2d 782 (10th Cir.1990), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 2895, 115 L.Ed.2d 1059 (1991); United States v. Roan Eagle, 867 F.2d 436 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1028, 109 S.Ct. 1764, 104 L.Ed.2d 199 (1989). The Second, Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits have all treated Hispanics as a cognizable group under Batson. See United States v. Esparsen, 930 F.2d 1461 (10th Cir.1991), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 112 S.Ct. 882, 116 L.Ed.2d 786 (1992); United States v. Ruiz, 894 F.2d 501 (2d Cir.1990); United States v. Moreno, 878 F.2d 817 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 979, 110 S.Ct. 508, 107 L.Ed.2d 510 (1989); United States v. Chinchilla, 874 F.2d 695 (9th Cir.1989). And when courts have determined that a defendant is not a member of a cognizable racial group, it has generally not been because he is not a member of a racial minority. Instead, the conclusion has been reached for more obvious reasons. Some of the categories that have been found not to constitute cognizable racial groups for Bat-son purposes are: women; black males, as opposed to blacks generally; and young adults. Nancy H. Reisman, Right to Jury Trial, 80 Geo.L.J. 1371, 1392-93 n. 1797 (1992).
Thus, if a defendant were an American of English descent, and asserted that other Americans of English descent were being stricken from the jury for that sole reason, he would not have standing to raise his claim under Batson because that group is not a “cognizable racial group.”4 Or if the defendant had an ancestor that was a member of some cognizable racial group — Native Americans, for example — yet the ancestor was so removed that no one could know of this lineage, then he would not have standing to raise a Batson claim for the exclusion of Native Americans from the jury.5
As the majority itself concedes, the cases in which courts have denied the Batson claims of white defendants have all been cases in which the white defendants tried to assert the equal protection claims of minority jurors. Those cases present the third-party claim made in the Powers case, not the first-party Batson claim presented here. The two courts that have had occasion to consider the type of situation presented here have both concluded that whites do constitute a cognizable racial group. Government of Virgin Islands v. Forte, 865 F.2d 59 (3d Cir.1989), presents a case in which a white defendant was accused of murdering a black man, in a jurisdiction where the population was predominantly black. On habeas review, the court rejected his claim, made under Batson, that the prosecutor had peremptorily challenged white venirepersons on a racially discriminatory basis — but only because of his failure to raise it to the state courts. The court explicitly acknowledged the legitimacy of his claim: “[W]e will not read Batson to make a distinction between white and black defendants. Defendants of both groups are entitled to trial before juries from which members of their race are not excluded as the result of purposeful discrimination by the prosecutor.” Forte, 865 F.2d at 64. Likewise, the court in Roman v. Abrams, 822 F.2d 214 (2d Cir.1987), cert. denied, 489 U.S. 1052, 109 S.Ct. 1311, 103 L.Ed.2d 580 (1989), found it indisputable that whites constituted a cognizable racial group:
The State’s contention that White persons do not constitute a cognizable or distinctive group for Sixth Amendment pur*1355poses need not detain us long. Although the Supreme Court has declined to explore precisely the contours of cognizability, ... it has made it clear that “the concept of ‘distinctiveness’ must be linked to the purposes of the fair cross-section requirement!;.]”
It is plain that the exclusion of entire racial groups from jury service for reasons wholly unrelated to the ability of the individuals to serve as jurors in a particular case is squarely within the[] parameters [of the purposes of the fair cross-section requirement].
Id. at 227-28 (citations omitted). Although Roman analyzed the propriety of the prosecutor’s peremptory challenges ünder the Sixth Amendment, rather than the equal protection clause, its understanding of “cognizable racial group” is relevant here because the underlying purposes of the Sixth Amendment’s fair cross-section requirement and of Batson’s requirements are the same. Compare Batson, 476 U.S. at 86-88, 106 S.Ct. at 1217-18 and Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 622, 530-31, 95 S.Ct. 692, 697-98, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975).
III.
The majority opinion refers to the historical discrimination against blacks in jury selection, and appears to suggest that because whites lack such a history, they are not entitled to Batson’s equal protection mandate. Such a notion should be rejected as without basis in law or reason. The Forte court recognized that it would be improper to “hold that a white defendant convicted by a jury selected in a racially discriminatory manner should be satisfied with the knowledge that it is usually blacks who are unfairly treated and therefore may be denied relief himself.” Forte, 865 F.2d at 64. And the Roman court noted that
the exclusion of groups normally in the majority is no less objectionable for it arbitrarily deprives that group of a share of the responsibility for the administration of justice, deprives the defendant of the possibility that his petit jury will reflect a fair ■ cross section of the community, and gives every appearance' of unfairness.
Roman, 822 F.2d at 228.
Classification on the basis of race is simply not, as a general rule, unconstitutional only because of the historical fact of discrimination against a particular group. It is constitutionally suspect because classification on the basis of race can, in most circumstances, serve no legitimate purpose: “[R]ace,' alien-age, or national origin [are] factors [that] are so seldom relevant to the achievement of any legitimate state interest that laws grounded in such considerations are deemed to reflect prejudice and antipathy....” City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., Inc., 473 U.S. 432, 440, 105 S.Ct. 3249, 3254, 87 L.Ed.2d 313 (1985). Thus, that some groups have historically borne the brunt of racial discrimination does not eliminate the irrationality and unconstitutionality of discriminating against other groups.
iv.
In addition to its use of history to bolster its reasoning, the majority alludes to Bat-son ’s multiple race-specific references to the black defendant and the black excluded jurors, intimating that this demonstrates the Supreme Court’s intention that the holding be likewise race-specific. Yet there is nothing in Batson to indicate that the Court did not intend to include whites within the ambit of its rule; specific references to blacks were obviously made because in Batson, the defendant and the stricken venirepersons were black — not because the holding was meant to apply only to blacks. Moreover, multiple race-neutral references to the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of race, as opposed to discrimination against one particular race, more than clarify the rule’s intended general application. And for this court to indicate that racial discrimination is less harmful or is more legitimate when directed against one race as opposed to another is for it to indicate something heretofore absent from the law of equal protection. The operation of “the Equal Protection Clause is not dependent on the race of those burdened or benefited by a particular classification.” City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 *1356U.S. 469, 494,109 S.Ct. 706, 722, 102 L.Ed.2d 854 (1989). As one court has noted,'
[t]he Constitution is both color blind and color conscious. To avoid conflict with the equal protection clause, a classification that denies a benefit, causes harm, or imposes a burden must not be based on race. In that sense, the Constitution is color blind. But the Constitution is color conscious to prevent discrimination being perpetuated and to undo the effects of past discrimination. The criterion is the relevancy of color to a legitimate governmental purpose.
United States v. Jefferson County Bd. of Educ., 372 F.2d 836, 876 (5th Cir.1966), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 840, 88 S.Ct. 67, 19 L.Ed.2d 103 (1967).
In the context of jury selection, as the Batson Court recognized, “[a] person’s race simply ‘is unrelated to his fitness as a juror.’ ” Batson, 476 U.S. at 87, 106 S.Ct. at 1718 (citation omitted). Accordingly, in this context, the Constitution’s equal protection clause must be applied in a color-blind manner. This case simply does not present the difficult questions raised by the situations in which a court should arguably be color-conscious, such as judicial consideration of affirmative action programs and concomitant claims of reverse discrimination. Rather, the allegations made by the defendants present a straightforward case of invidious discrimination, in which a state actor is alleged to have made decisions impermissibly grounded in sweeping assumptions about how members of a particular race will behave, as a group. If the prosecutor made peremptory strikes for the reason the defendants claim he did, then he did so because he thought whites would be incapable, or at least less capable than other racial groups, of convicting white men accused of harming a black man. The defendants’ allegations present the paradigmatic Batson claim, in which a defendant alleges that race was used as “a proxy for determining juror bias or competence.” Powers, — U.S. at-, 111 S.Ct. at 1370. There is no need for application of a new rule.
V.
In Detroit, a majority of the population is black, and a minority is white — an unusual circumstance in this country. Here, as in Batson, three defendants claim to have suffered from a prosecutor’s racially discriminatory strikes against minority venirepersons— but here, the minority happened to be white. Although the reversed racial roles in this case starkly highlight the extent to which this case requires a straight application of the rule in Batson, I do not mean to imply that Batson challenges should be limited to situations in which .the defendant and the struck jurors are of a race that is a minority in the relevant jurisdiction. The rationale underlying the Batson decision requires
that no juror, regardless of race, should be removed simply because he happens to share the same race as the defendant. Exclusion of a potential juror simply because he is white is no less racial discrimination than exclusion of a juror simply because he is black.... It is difficult to see any distinction in terms of degrees of harm to defendant, jurors, or the community if the racial roles are reversed ... or if the group discriminated against happens to hold a majority position in the communi'ty.
Serr & Maney, supra, at 24-25, 25 n. 140.6
In sum, it is manifest to me that Batson does, contrary to the majority’s assertion, lead inexorably to the. conclusion that white defendants suffer an equal protection violation when a prosecutor strikes white venire-persons for racially discriminatory reasons. The majority’s holding that Batson stands only for the proposition “that black defendants have standing to challenge a state prosecutor’s exclusion of black jurors on account of their race under the Equal Protection Clause,” majority op. at 1349 (emphasis *1357added), represents a departure from what has consistently been understood to be the requirement of the Constitution. Apparently, the majority does not even view Batson as applying only to minority defendants; under the majority’s reasoning, after Powers and Batson, it would constitute creation of a new rule to prohibit racially'discriminatory challenges in the case of, for example, an Asian-American defendant. Requiring each “cognizable racial group” to get a representative defendant in front of the Supreme Court in order to be entitled to basic tenets of the equal protection clause is without precedent in our country’s constitutional doctrine.
VI.
In light of my strong fundamental disagreement with the majority opinion’s reasoning, I must dissent. Despite considerable reluctance, I feel compelled to conclude that the issuance of the writ of habeas corpus should be affirmed. First, our standard of review of the district court’s findings of fact is limited to review for clear error. McCall v. Dutton, 863 F.2d 454, 459 (6th Cir.1988), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1020, 109 S.Ct. 1744, 104 L.Ed.2d 181 (1989). Second, the state trial court here made imprecise and unfocused findings of fact that were wholly inadequate to protect the record before it. In so doing, the state court virtually invited the federal court to conduct the thorough and painstaking inquiry that it did, and created a situation where it was necessary for the federal court to make its own highly detailed findings of fact.
In short, the district court did what the Recorder’s Court should have done, by providing a full and complete record and making critical findings of fact. In light of the state court’s deficient performance, I am simply unable to say that the district court failed to accord sufficient deference to the state court’s decision that the defendants had failed to make a prima facie case.
Therefore, I dissent.

. Although the Court in Batson acknowledged the deprivation of equal protection rights suffered by excluded jurors, and thereby tacitly admitted the possibility of third-party standing, 476 U.S. at 86-88, 106 S.Ct. at 1717-18, it did not explicitly decide the issue until Powers.

. This type of claim derives from Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 25 L.Ed. 664 (1880), where the Court held that "the State denies a black defendant equal protection of the laws when it puts him on trial before a jury from which members of his race have been purposefully excluded.” Batson, 476 U.S. at 85, 106 S.Ct. at 1716 (citing Strauder).

. This type of claim derives from Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965), where the Court held 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.’ ” Batson, 476 U.S. at 84, 106 S.Ct. at 1716 (quoting Swain, 380 U.S. at 203-04, 85 S.Ct. at 826-27). In Powers, the Court recognized implicitly the possibility that a prosecutor may wish to strike venirepersons for racially discriminatory strategic reasons unrelated to the assumption that jurors will show improper bias in favor of a defendant of their same race.

. This example demonstrates the fallacy in the majority's conclusion that if the majority race is a "cognizable racial group,” then that requirement will be rendered meaningless because any defendant will be able to meet it. The majority fails to recognize that a defendant still must show that the excluded venirepersons are from the same group. Thus, a defendant of English descent who can make a prima facie showing only that venirepersons of English descent were excluded from the jury has not raised a Batson challenge — even though he is white, and thus a member of a cognizable racial group. If he were able to show that whites generally were excluded from the jury, though, he has raised a Batson challenge.

. He would, of course, still be able to assert a Batson-type challenge, by relying on the third-party standing described in Powers.

. I recognize, however, that as a matter of practicality, it is generally only when jurors and defendants are of a minority race that prosecutors will be tempted to discriminate in the manner proscribed by Batson. As a general rule, utilizing this type of tactic against white venirepersons would simply not be at issue in the majority of jurisdictions, where the majority race is white, because it would be futile — a prosecutor would rapidly exhaust his peremptory challenges, only to be faced with a venire that was still largely white. ■