Court Opinion

ID: 9731384
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:44:06.587633+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:17.462758
License: Public Domain

PAGE, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I dissent not because of the result in this case, although I believe it is wrong, but because of the implications today’s decision has for the future. The court’s decision will encourage and permit prosecutors to offer contrived explanations for challenged peremptory strikes of prospective jurors. As a result, the prohibition that prosecutors not base peremptory strikes in jury selection on race or gender, as required by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986); State v. McRae, 494 N.W.2d 252 (Minn.1992), may well be rendered meaningless.
There is a three-step process for evaluating a claim that a prosecutor has used a peremptory strike in a manner violating the Equal Protection Clause. Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S. 352, 358-59, 111 S.Ct. 1859, 1866, 114 L.Ed.2d 395 (1991). First, the defendant must make a prima facie showing that the prosecutor has exercised the peremptory strike on the basis of race or gender. Id.; J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., — U.S. -, -, 114 S.Ct. 1419, 1429, 128 L.Ed.2d 89 (1994). Second, and only if a *19prima facie showing is made, the prosecutor must articulate race or gender-neutral explanations for the exercise of the peremptory-strike at issue. Hernandez, 500 U.S. at 359, 111 S.Ct. at 1866; — U.S. at -, 114 S.Ct. at 1429. Although that explanation “need not rise to the level justifying exercise of a challenge for cause,” it must be “a ‘clear and reasonably specific’ explanation of [the prosecutor’s] ‘legitimate reasons’ for exercising the [peremptory strike].” Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. at 97, 98 n. 20, 106 S.Ct. at 1723, 1724 n. 20. Finally, the trial court has the duty to determine if the defendant has proven purposeful discrimination.1 Id. at 98, 106 S.Ct. at 1724.
In this case, defense counsel objected to the prosecutor’s peremptory strike of the only person of color in the jury venire, a Hispanic woman. Apparently believing that a prima facie case had been established, the trial court engaged in the following discussion with the prosecutor, Ms. Keena, and defense counsel, Mr. Maunu:
THE COURT: Ms. Keena, I need a race neutral reason.
MS KEENA: Her education level, her ninth grade education level. She was having a very difficult time understanding a lot of the terms that we were using.
THE COURT: I guess I didn’t really get a reading that she was having trouble with the language.
MS KEENA: Well, I did. I mean the difference between consume and drinking.
MR. MAUNU: Your Honor, I believe—
MS KEENA: —Do I have to go through an entire trial explaining? I mean we won’t know if she understands .a term or not?
MR. MAUNU: It was my observation that she was responsive to the questions and gave the appropriate answers.
MS KEENA: After explanation, and after rephrasing the questions.
MR. MAUNU: She has lived in this country for several years and she is employed and she speaks English.
THE COURT: The objections of the defendant are sustained.
After sustaining the objection, the trial court informed the prospective juror that she would be seated on the jury. At the same time, the trial court, at the prosecutor’s request “to research this because I don’t know that this is the correct law on it,” agreed to allow the prosecutor to research the issue overnight.
The following morning, the prosecutor, after a brief discussion of the requirements for making out a prima facie case, proceeded to provide the trial court with two new reasons for the peremptory strike of the prospective juror: (1) that she exhibited a nervous demeanor during voir dire; and (2) that she expressed some hesitance to sit in judgment. In addition, and much like the modern day political spin doctor, the prosecutor offered a new explanation of the initial reason given for striking the prospective juror. The new spin was that the prospective juror’s education level would interfere with her ability to understand the complexities of the case. In imparting this new spin on the initial reason for striking the prospective juror, the prosecutor essentially abandoned the old spin — -that she could not understand English. The trial court, finding that the prospective juror’s hesitance to sit in judgment and that the new spin — her alleged inability to understand the complexities of the case — were valid race-neutral reasons for exercising the peremptory strike, reversed its earlier ruling, and struck her.
The concern I have in this case is the prosecutor’s delay in articulating her legitimate reasons for the peremptory strike after it was challenged by the defendant. I believe that it was error for the trial court to have considered the new reasons and the new spin given by the prosecutor the day after the peremptory strike was exercised.2 *20Batson requires that when a prosecutor’s peremptory strike of a prospective juror is challenged, the prosecutor must give a “clear and reasonably specific” explanation of his or her “legitimate reasons” for exercising the strike.3 476 U.S. at 98 n. 20, 106 S.Ct. at 1724 n. 20. “Postponing consideration of a Batson claim * * * risks infecting what would have been the prosecutor’s spontaneous explanations with contrived rationalizations.” United States v. Biaggi, 909 F.2d 662, 679 (2d Cir.1990)4 (citing United States v. Tunnessen, 763 F.2d 74, 78 (2d Cir.1985), for the rule that a trial court must contemporaneously explain its grant of a continuance in order “to guard against [the] risk that [the] district judge ‘may simply rationalize his action long after the fact’”).
In this case, at the time the peremptory strike of the prospective juror was challenged, the prosecutor offered only one explanation of the reason for the peremptory strike: her inability to understand and comprehend English. That explanation was spontaneous and appears to have been a clear and reasonably specific explanation of the prosecutor’s legitimate and genuine reason for the peremptory strike. On the record before us, the prosecutor’s failure to promptly articulate any other reasons or explanations convinces me that there were none. The fact that the prosecutor provided a new explanation along with different reasons for the peremptory strike the next morning implies that even if they would have justified the peremptory strike, they were not the prosecutor’s legitimate or genuine reasons for exercising the peremptory strike at the time it was exercised.
The purpose behind Batson is to ensure that the reasons relied on to exercise a peremptory strike are legitimate, race-neutral, and nonpretextual. The goal of the three-step procedure outlined in Batson is to identify the prosecutor’s genuine reasons for the strike, not unrelied-upon justifications for the strike. As the Supreme Court has recently noted, “ ‘proving that the same decision would have been justified * * * is not the same as proving that the same decision would have been made.’” McKennon v. Nashville Banner Publishing Co., — U.S. -, -, 115 S.Ct. 879, 885, 130 L.Ed.2d 852 (1995) (quoting Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228, 252, 109 S.Ct. 1775, 1791, 104 L.Ed.2d 268 (1989) (plurality opinion)).
Today’s decision allows prosecutors to engage in mischief that will interfere with the achievement of the goal of identifying their genuine reasons for exercising peremptory strikes and, in the process, undermines the protections guaranteed by the Equal Protection Clause, as set out in Batson.

. Here, review of the trial court’s finding was made unnecessarily difficult by the trial court's failure to closely follow the three-step process.

. Had the trial court reversed itself based on its reconsideration of the reason and explanation given the day before, our review would be limited to whether its determination was clearly erroneous. On the facts before us, such a determination would not have been clearly erroneous. State v. James, 520 N.W.2d 399, 404 (Minn.*201994). That, however, is not what the trial court did.

. As noted, Batson also makes clear that the reasons "need not rise to the level justifying exercise of a challenge for cause.” 476 U.S. at 97, 106 S.Ct. at 1723. Indeed, in my view, like the discharge of an at-will employee, which may be justified by any reason or no reason, so long as it is not an illegal reason, the peremptory strike of a juror may be made for any reason, so long as it is not a constitutionally-impermissible reason or pretext for a constitutionally-impermissible reason.

. While the issue addressed in Biaggi is different than the one before us, the principle that a delay in the prosecutor’s spontaneous explanation ' "risks infesting [those explanations] with contrived rationalizations” is nonetheless applicable.