Court Opinion

ID: 9686687
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:01:06.106182+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:21.377508
License: Public Domain

ANDERSON, RUSSELL A., Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
In my view, the majority has elevated the right to peremptory challenge over the right established by the Fourteenth Amendment to prevent the use of a peremptory challenge to exclude persons from the jury solely on the basis of race. The latter is prohibited by the Equal Protec*842tion Clause of the United States Constitution. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 85-86, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). Not only does a defendant have the “right to be tried by a jury whose members are selected pursuant to nondiscriminatory criteria,” but prospective jurors have the right to participate in jury service and cannot be excluded on the basis of race. Id. at 85-86, 87, 106 S.Ct. 1712; see also Georgia v. McCollum, 505 U.S. 42, 48-49, 112 S.Ct. 2348, 120 L.Ed.2d 33 (1992). It is settled that a constitutional claim prevails over a nonconstitutional one. Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 180, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803). The dissenting opinion in Swain v. Alabama recognized this principle: “Were it necessary to make an absolute choice between the right of a defendant to have a jury chosen in conformity with the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment and the right to challenge peremptorily, the Constitution compels a choice of the former.” 380 U.S. 202, 244, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965) (Goldberg, J., dissenting).
This is a racially charged case. A Caucasian defendant was charged with a brutal first-degree assault against a victim, a person of color, because the victim was speaking in Spanish at a work site. The charge and the circumstances surrounding it required that the trial judge be particularly sensitive to racial issues during voir dire, as the Final Report of the Minnesota Supreme Court Task Force on Racial Bias in the Judicial System recommends.1 See Minnesota Supreme Court Task Force on Racial Bias in the Judicial System Final Report 37 (May 1993); see also State v. Buggs, 581 N.W.2d 329, 345 (Minn.1998) (Page, J., dissenting). The Task Force’s recommendations were based on their findings, including:
1. People of color are overrepresented in the number of individuals arrested and prosecuted and imprisoned, as well as in the number of individuals who are victims and witnesses.
2. Jury pools rarely are representative of the racial composition of a community.
3. People of color have a general distrust of the criminal justice system and exclusion from jury service fosters that distrust.
4. The ethnic, racial, and sexual makeup of a jury affects the outcomes of cases.
Minnesota Supreme Court Task Force on Racial Bias in the Judicial System Final Report 36. At voir dire, the second prospective juror examined was an African-American woman whose father was a police officer in Atlanta whom she saw “probably once every two years.” Defense counsel questioned her first:
Q: Is there anything about the fact that your father is a police officer that would affect your ability to listen to police officers on the witness stand?
A: No, because I’ve worked with police officers before. I’m — I—when I was in high school I had some, like, training with them because I was going to — I wanted to be a cop and I did training with the police officers and police academy and stuff like that, but, I mean, I hear both sides. I’m not one to judge before I hear everything. Because my dad is a cop doesn’t mean that I automatically have to, like, listen to everything they say or believe everything that they say.
*843⅜ ⅜ ⅜ ⅜
Q: What do you think about the concept that the State must prove the Defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?
A: I believe that. I think that people should not be convicted unless there is 100 percent [proof]. I need to see something that is solid in order to convict.
Defense counsel exercised a peremptory challenge even before he completed his examination of the juror and before the prosecutor conducted any voir dire of the juror. After the court excused the jury panel, the court asked defense counsel to explain the basis for his peremptory strike (step two of the Batson analysis).2 Counsel explained that the reasons for excluding this juror were her “heavy law enforcement exposure” and “the fact that I am going to significantly question the police officers’ conduct in this case and how they investigated the case.” The prosecutor responded by addressing the third step of the Batson test, “[o]ur position, Judge, is that it’s merely [pretextual].” Reiners’ counsel rejoined that he was not striking the juror because of her race:
Your Honor, just because a witness says they can be fair, that would be similar if [the juror in question] basically had been assaulted and said to the Court, “Well, I can be fair.” To require me to keep her on the jury just because she says she can be fair is not fair to Mr. Reiners. I should have the right to strike her if I give a reason that is reasonable. And I have the other African Americans on the jury, I have them actually rated fairly high. I’ll be honest with the Court. I am not striking people because they are African American.
After hearing Reiners’ counsel on the issue of pretext, the judge found that the reasons given by defense counsel were a pretext for racial discrimination and explained, “I listened to everything that was said and that was the basis of my ruling. I weighed and balanced everything that was said.”
At step three of the peremptory challenge inquiry, the question for the court is whether counsel’s race-neutral explanation is pretextual. State v. Everett, 472 N.W.2d 864, 868 (Minn.1991); see also Minn. R.Crim. P. 26.02, subd. 6a(3)(c). A “pretext” is an “ostensible reason or motive assigned or assumed as a color or cover for the real reason or motive.” Black’s Law Dictionary, 1187 (6th ed.1990). “[I]mplau-sible or fantastic justifications may (and probably will) be found to be pretexts for purposeful discrimination.” Purkett v. Elem, 514 U.S. 765, 768, 115 S.Ct. 1769, 131 L.Ed.2d 834 (1995) (per curiam). In determining whether counsel’s reason is pretextual, the court must decide whether counsel’s stated reason for peremptorily striking a juror should be believed. In making this determination, the court is to consider “all the relevant facts bearing on the issue.” State v. Gaitan, 536 N.W.2d 11, 15 (Minn.1995); accord Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 123 S.Ct. 1029, 1041, 154 L.Ed.2d 931 (2003) (“In the context of the threshold examination in this Batson claim the issuance of a COA [certificate of appealability] can be supported by any evidence demonstrating that, despite the neutral explanation of the prosecution, the peremptory strikes in the final *844analysis were race based.”). There will seldom be much evidence on the issue, and the best evidence often will be the demean- or of the attorney who exercises the challenge. Other factors include “how reasonable, or how improbable, the explanations are; and by whether the proffered rationale has some basis in accepted trial strategy.” Id., 537 U.S. at -, 123 S.Ct. at 1040. As with the evaluation of the state of mind of a juror challenged for cause, evaluation of the attorney’s state of mind in step three of a Batson challenge hinges on the credibility of the attorney’s explanation and the attorney’s demeanor and lies “ ‘peculiarly within a trial judge’s province.’ ” Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S. 352, 365, 111 S.Ct. 1859, 114 L.Ed.2d 395 (1991) (quoting Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U.S. 412, 428, 105 S.Ct. 844, 83 L.Ed.2d 841 (1985)); see State v. Logan, 535 N.W.2d 320, 323 (Minn.1995). Here the juror explained that her relationship to law enforcement was remote and that she would “strongly” require 100 percent proof to convict. The court observed the juror’s demeanor and the answers she gave that were responsive to defense counsel’s rationale for striking the juror. The court concluded that defense counsel’s rationale for striking the juror was pretextual:
Well, I do think it’s a bit [pretextual] reasoned because you asked her or she volunteered and gave you, in one of your open-ended questions, that she would not believe a person just because they were a police officer. I think that was a very telling answer that supports your side of the case more so than it does the State. Most of the answers, I thought, were more favorable to you than to the State. So I am going to deny the strike, keep her on.
In Batson, and ever since, the trial court’s decision on the ultimate question of discriminatory intent represents a finding of fact accorded great deference on appeal. Batson, 476 U.S. at 98 n. 21, 106 S.Ct. 1712; see also Hernandez, 500 U.S. at 364, 111 S.Ct. 1859; State v. Taylor, 650 N.W.2d 190, 200-01 (Minn.2002); State v. Moore, 438 N.W.2d 101, 107 (Minn.1989). The rationale for such great deference to the trial court’s decision on discriminatory intent is explained in Hernandez: “[deference to trial court findings on the issue of discriminatory intent makes particular sense in this context because, as we noted in Batson, the finding ‘largely will turn on evaluation of credibility.’ ” Hernandez, 500 U.S. at 365, 111 S.Ct. 1859 (internal citation omitted). In this case, the jury selection process consisted of examining one prospective juror at a time and making peremptory challenges at the end of each examination. The Batson challenge at issue regards only the second prospective juror. Because the challenge came very early on in the jury selection, we do not have the total selection process to evaluate on appeal. To my thinking, the jury selection process used here provides all the more reason to give deference to the trial court.
While I agree that express findings on discriminatory intent in step three of a Batson analysis by the trial court are preferable, neither this court nor the United States Supreme Court has required such findings in the past. For example, in Hernandez, after the trial judge assessed the credibility of the prosecutor — as Batson and Hernandez suggest — the court, as described by the Supreme Court, made no express findings and simply denied the Batson challenge. Hernandez, 500 U.S. at 357-58, 111 S.Ct. 1859. In State v. Stewart, a Minnesota case, the trial judge stated, “All right; the record is made.” 514 N.W.2d 559, 563 (Minn.1994). From this comment, we inferred that the trial judge was satisfied with the explanation given for the peremptory challenge. Id. We concluded in that case that a trial judge’s *845failure to explicitly rule on a Batson objection does not automatically require a new trial. Stewart, 514 N.W.2d at 563. In fact, where the court cannot discern counsel’s pattern of questioning or striking jurors, as in this case, express findings may be difficult to make.
We have given great deference to the trial judge’s decision on the ultimate issue of discriminatory intent in cases, such as this one, where the trial court did not follow Batson’s three-step analysis by the letter. See, e.g., Gaitan, 536 N.W.2d at 16; Stewart, 514 N.W.2d at 563; Moore, 438 N.W.2d at 107. How ironic that this court should find an abuse of the great discretion we accord trial courts in a case in which a Caucasian defendant is accused of brutally assaulting a person of color because he was speaking Spanish in the work place and the trial judge decided that a peremptory challenge of a juror of color reflected discriminatory intent.

. In fact, because it is so important that race not play an impermissible role in excluding jurors, a judge may raise a Batson challenge sua sponte. Minn. R.Crim. P. 26.02, subd. 6a(2).

. We have reviewed Batson challenges by going directly to the prong at issue in the past. See State v. Taylor, 650 N.W.2d 190, 201 (Minn.2002); see also Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S. 352, 359, 111 S.Ct. 1859, 114 L.Ed.2d 395 (1991) (noting that trial court’s failure to rule on step one because prosecutor defended his strikes without "prompting or inquiry” was not a problem; ”[t]his departure from the normal course of proceeding need not concern us.”).