Court Opinion

ID: 9477453
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:23:47.171726+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:53.128197
License: Public Domain

BOWMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
While concurring in the rest of the Court’s decision, I respectfully dissent from Part V. of the opinion insofar as it applies to defendants Townsley and Webbe. While I agree that defendant Gandy, who is black, has made a strong showing for a prima facie case under the principles enunciated in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), I do not agree that Townsley and Webbe, who are white, are entitled to join in Gandy’s Batson challenge. In order to invoke the constitutional protections announced in Batson, “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.” Batson, 476 U.S. at 96, 106 S.Ct. at 1723 (citation omitted). Cf. United States v. Garcia, 836 F.2d 386, 388 (8th Cir.1987). The very language of Batson thus makes it clear that Townsley and Webbe have no standing to complain about the exclusion of black jurors.
It cannot be argued seriously that Townsley and Webbe suffered any prejudice from the racial composition of the petit jury selected for their trial. Even assuming that the jury was unfair in a constitutional sense as to Gandy, in what sense was the composition of the jury unfair as to Townsley and Webbe? The two cases relied upon by the Court, ante at 1084, are of no help in answering that question. In both cases, the complaining party (unlike Townsley and Webbe) experienced direct, personal prejudice by reason of racially discriminatory governmental actions. Thus, in Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U.S. 429, 433-34, 104 S.Ct. 1879, 1882, 80 L.Ed.2d 421 (1984), the Supreme Court reversed a custody award that deprived a white mother of the custody of her minor child solely because the mother was cohabiting with a black man. Similarly, in United States v. Brown, 770 F.2d 912, 913 (10th Cir.1985), rev’d, — U.S. —, 107 S.Ct. 708, 93 L.Ed.2d 649 (1987), on remand, 817 F.2d 674 (10th Cir.1987), the prosecution denied the black defendant the benefit of a constitutionally selected jury by exercising its peremptory challenges on the basis of an assumed affinity between potential black jurors and defense counsel, a prominent black politician. The Court’s decision in the present case, far from having any support in prior decisions, is in fact an unprecedented extension of Batson — an extension that, as demonstrated by the portion of Batson quoted in the preceding paragraph, is contrary to Batson’s guiding principles.
Even if Gandy wins his Batson hearing and gets a new trial, the conclusion that the jury Townsley and Webbe had was a fair jury as to them will not change. Although a jury including more blacks would be different from the jury that tided Townsley and Webbe, that is beside the point. If the challenged jurors could not have been struck for cause (and there can be no Batson violation unless that is the fact), the exercise of peremptory challenges against blacks (or against any other potential jurors, for that matter) inevitably changes the composition of the jury. Under Batson, however, the difference in the composition of the jury resulting from the use of peremptory challenges matters only when members of a cognizable racial group are struck and only with respect to a defendant who is a member of that group. By what mysterious alchemy does a defendant who is not a member of a cognizable racial group, and who therefore would have no standing to invoke Batson if he or she were tried alone, suddenly come to be protected by Batson when tried with a co-defendant who is a member of a cognizable racial group? The Court’s opinion does not give us a satisfactory answer to that question.
Because there is nothing in the Batson opinion even to suggest that a white defendant may assert its principles derivatively through a black co-defendant, and because the Court has no factual basis for concluding that a white defendant tried with a black co-defendant suffers any prejudice when blacks are excluded from their *1089petit jury, I cannot agree with the Court that Townsley and Webbe are entitled to benefit from Gandy’s Batson challenge. See United States v. Vaccaro, 816 F.2d 443, 457 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 108 S.Ct. 262, 98 L.Ed.2d 220 (1987) (“[U]nder Batson, [the white defendants] could not have made out a prima facie case of discrimination in juror selection in any event.”). Cf. United States v. Sgro, 816 F.2d 30, 33 (1st Cir.1987) (“For a defendant to establish a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination in the selection of the petit jury, ... the defendant first must show that he is a member of a cognizable racial group.”), cert. denied, Feb. 22, 1988.
Batson was designed to protect blacks and other minority defendants from invidious discrimination in the jury selection process. It was not intended to be used, and should not be used, as a basis for overturning the convictions of defendants who are not members of the black race and who in no way suffered any prejudice from the prosecution’s exercise of its peremptory challenges to remove black jurors. I therefore would affirm the convictions of Townsley and Webbe on Counts I and IV, vacate the sentences imposed thereon, and remand the case to the District Court for resentencing in view of our reversal of the convictions on Count III. I would remand the case for further proceedings under Batson as to Gandy alone.