Court Opinion

ID: 9714141
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:32:04.323709+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:23.845264
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE HARRISON, dissenting: In Harris I, the court remanded this case to the circuit court with directions to make new findings of fact and conclusions of law with respect to the State’s exclusion of venire members Pickett, Taylor and Simmons. This was the second time the court ordered the circuit court to consider defendant’s challenge under Batson v. Kentucky (1986), 476 U.S. 79, 90 L. Ed. 2d 69, 106 S. Ct. 1712, and for the second time defendant’s challenge was rejected. As it did after the first hearing, and based on the same evidence, the circuit court once again concluded that the State had not excluded Pickett, Taylor and Simmons for racially discriminatory reasons. In my view, that conclusion is no more sound now than it was when we issued our last opinion in the case. My colleagues are able to reach the result they do today only by implicitly overruling this court’s prior decision. Because I think Harris I should still be followed, I dissent. In Harris I, this court noted the importance of carefully scrutinizing claims by the State that it had excluded jurors because it did not know enough about them. Because such explanations "can be easily utilized as a pretext for discriminatory challenges,” the court held that trial courts considering such explanations should take into account whether the State made any attempt at discovering the unknown information by, for example, requesting that supplemental questions be asked during voir dire. (Harris, 129 Ill. 2d at 188.) In its opinion today, the majority abandons that requirement, declaring instead that the State’s failure to propose supplemental questions did not render its claim of insufficient knowledge fatally invalid. 164 Ill. 2d at 333-34. The majority justifies its position by citing testimony given by one of the prosecutors at the second Batson hearing. That prosecutor explained that the State avoids asking jurors additional questions because doing so would prolong the jury-selection process. He also stated that "[a]nother reason we don’t ask questions is, sometimes we are afraid of what the answer might be. The answer might contaminate or irritate the other jurors.” A threshold problem with this rationale is that the prosecutor who advanced it was not involved in the selection of the jury here, and there is absolutely no evidence that these considerations actually played any role in the State’s conduct in this case. The prosecutor who testified merely stated these concerns as general propositions. At no time did he pretend to ascribe them to his predecessors in the case. An equally fundamental flaw in the State’s rationale is that the same arguments could be made about virtually any question tendered during voir dire. Every inquiry by the court or the parties lengthens the proceedings, and every question holds the uncertainty of an unexpected response. If we knew what the answers would be and how other jurors would respond to them, there would be no point to voir dire at all. As a result, this cannot be regarded as sufficient grounds for overcoming the defendant’s prima facie case of racial discrimination under Batson. In validating the State’s decision to exercise a peremptory challenge against venireperson Pickett, the majority cites two additional justifications advanced by the State, namely, that Pickett’s wife was a school teacher and that Pickett might suffer a loss in income from his part-time work as a barber if selected to serve. These justifications must also be rejected, however, because they were not relied upon by the trial judge in making his decision. The majority opines that specific findings by the trial court were not required (164 Ill. 2d at 335), but in Harris I this court expressly held otherwise (Harris, 129 Ill. 2d at 185). Although the court may now wish to jettison such a requirement, now is not the time to do so. Having ruled as we did, basic concepts of due process require us to remain consistent at least within the confines of the same case. With respect to the exercise of a peremptory challenge against venireperson Taylor, the additional reasons found by the trial court to be legitimate were that the State’s Attorney wanted to leave room for other, more desirable jurors and that Taylor lived close to the defendant and to where the incident occurred. Contrary to the majority, I believe these justifications must be deemed pretextual. Without reaching the question of whether it is ever legitimate to excuse a minority venireperson on the grounds that the prosecutor is looking for someone with more "desirable” socioeconomic characteristics, I note simply that the record will not support a claim that exclusion of Taylor was necessary to enable the State to accomplish such a goal. As the State itself concedes, it is now impossible to reconstruct the order in which challenges were exercised in the case. As for the issue of proximity, this is a factor which must be viewed with particular skepticism in the context of peremptory challenges. Given the incidence of black-on-black crime, and the geographical segregation of minority groups that still characterizes urban areas such as Chicago, "proximity to the crime scene” can be a ready subterfuge for excluding African-American jurors. While consideration of this factor will not always be improper, the State fails to explain how it is relevant under the facts of this case. As it turns out Taylor did not live anywhere near the crime scene, but even if the prosecutor mistakenly thought she did, it is of no consequence. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that Taylor had any personal knowledge of the crime, the participants, or the neighborhood, nor did she give any indication that these or any other factors would affect her ability to serve on the jury. As for venireperson Simmons, the circuit court found that the State had established two legitimate alternative reasons for excluding her. First, as in the case of venireperson Taylor, the State claimed that it wanted to seat other, more desirable jurors. As with Taylor, however, the State cannot establish that it needed to eliminate Simmons in order to make room for the additional jurors who were allegedly superior. I note, moreover, that the particular jurors cited by the trial court were not uniformly superior to Simmons under the criteria identified. They were not all older, they were not all better educated, and they had not all been in their jobs longer than Simmons. The second alternative reason given was that Simmons’ husband was unemployed. The unemployment of a prospective juror’s spouse is not sufficient, standing alone, to rebut a defendant’s prima facie case of race discrimination. (See People v. Powell (1991), 224 Ill. App. 3d 127, 134.) Because the other justifications advanced here were pretextual, this reason is therefore insufficient to save the State’s case. For the foregoing reasons, I would hold that defendant was denied his right to equal protection under the fourteenth amendment because the State engaged in purposeful discrimination against him in violation of Batson v. Kentucky (1986), 476 U.S. 79, 90 L. Ed. 2d 69, 106 S. Ct. 1712. The judgment of the circuit court should be reversed, and this cause should be remanded for a new trial.