Court Opinion

ID: 9547347
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:46:09.449571+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:17:38.219917
License: Public Domain

FELDMAN, Justice,
specially concurring.
I cannot agree with the portion of the opinion upholding the use of peremptory challenges to remove all blacks from the jury panel.
Defendant contends that the sixth amendment guarantee of an “impartial jury” requires that there be a fair chance that the trial jury reflect a cross-section of the community, so “that the prosecution is no longer free to use its peremptory challenges to exclude an entire ethnic or racial group from the jury room.” Ante, at 1254. The majority holds that it “[does] not find that the Sixth Amendment mandates the conclusion.... ” Id. In reaching this result, the majority finds that the sixth amendment is violated only by a “systematic exclusion of an identifiable group.” Ante, at 1256 (emphasis supplied).
Of course, since the majority also holds that it “will not look behind the removal of jurors to the prosecutors’ reasons for striking them,” {ante, at 1256), the prohibition against systematic exclusion refers not to the “system” used in the particular case under consideration, but instead to a “system” used in some unspecified number of prior cases. If exclusion of minorities violates the sixth amendment guarantee of a fair trial, it is difficult to understand why the violation occurs only when this defendant can show that the state has also violated the Constitution in other cases. The majority does not deal with this question.
In speaking of the sixth amendment guarantee of “an impartial jury” (and the identical guarantee in art. 2, § 24 of the Arizona Constitution), the majority admonishes the prosecution that its duty is to “seek justice, not merely to convict,” so that it should use its peremptory challenges to obtain not “a jury biased in its favor” but only one that will “view the evidence fairly and impartially.” Ante, at 1256. The effect of these splendid words is immediately diminished, if not eviscerated, by the court’s holding that it “will not look behind the removal of jurors [by the use of peremptory challenges] to the prosecutors’ reasons for striking them.” Id. This, of course, allows the prosecutor to do exactly what was done in the case at bench — use peremptory challenges to remove all blacks from a jury panel, purposefully insuring that a black defendant will be tried by an all white jury.1
*543While the majority purports to follow the precedent of the United States Supreme Court in Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965), its language goes far beyond the holding in Swain and gives the state and its agents carte blanche to use peremptory challenges for purposes which Swain holds constitutionally impermissible. Swain, in fact, is a fourteenth amendment case and cannot be used to support the court’s sixth amendment analysis. Swain was decided before the sixth amendment guarantee of an impartial jury was applied to the states. Although the majority recognizes this, it states that Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404, 92 S.Ct. 1628, 32 L.Ed.2d 184 (1972), and Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975) give Swain “continued vitality in Sixth Amendment jurisprudence” Ante, at 1255. That argument must fall before the recent memorandum decision of the United States Supreme Court in the consolidated cases of McCray v. New York, Miller v. Illinois, and Perry v. Louisiana, 461 U.S. 961, 103 S.Ct. 2438, 77 L.Ed.2d 1322 (1983).
In these cases the Court considered three state decisions affirming convictions where juries had allegedly been racially culled by use of peremptory challenges. Although certiorari was denied, five justices spoke to the issue of whether a prosecutor’s use of the peremptory challenge to exclude all blacks because of their race infringed on the sixth amendment right to an impartial jury. Justices Marshall and Brennan noted that the guarantee of “an impartial jury” had already been construed to encompass the requirement that the jury represent a “fair cross-section” of the community and that the exclusion of a particular race from jury service simply “because of their race ‘contravenes the very idea of a jury [as] a body truly representative of the community____’” McCray v. New York, 461 U.S. at 967, 103 S.Ct. at 2442 (quoting Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. at 528, 95 S.Ct. at 696.) Therefore, Justices Marshall and Brennan dissented from the denial of certiorari, stating that they would grant the writ to re-examine Swain in light of sixth amendment principles. Id., 103 S.Ct. at 2443. Justices Stevens, Blackmun and Powell had joined in the vote to deny certiorari, but explained in a separate opinion that they did not disagree with Justice Marshall’s “appraisal of the importance of the underlying issue.” Id. at 2438. These justices acknowledged the trend of state court decisions contrary to Swain, and concluded that:
... It is a sound exercise of discretion for the [U.S. Supreme] Court to allow the various States to serve as laboratories in which the issue receives further study before it is addressed by this court.
Id. at 2439.
Thus, it is an open question whether Swain has any application to a sixth amendment analysis of the guarantee of an impartial jury, and the majority statement (ante, at 1255) that it will interpret the Arizona guarantee as co-extensive with the sixth amendment is premature to say the least. We have been invited by five members of the United States Supreme Court to make an independent analysis of the discriminatory use of peremptory challenges. That analysis could serve to illuminate the issues that, according to five members of the Court, have not been foreclosed by Swain.
The courts that have undertaken the type of analysis invited by the United States Supreme Court have yet to reach the conclusion offered by the majority of this court. Courts in California, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Florida have acknowledged that the right to an “impartial jury” includes the right to a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community. *544Thus, they hold that the constitutional guarantee is violated by the use of peremptory challenges for the sole purpose of removing from the trial jury all persons who belong to the same cognizable group or minority as the defendant. See People v. Wheeler, 22 Cal.3d 258, 148 Cal.Rptr. 890, 583 P.2d 748 (1978); Commonwealth v. Soares, 377 Mass. 461, 387 N.E.2d 499, cert. denied, 444 U.S. 881, 100 S.Ct. 170, 62 L.Ed.2d 110 (1979); State v. Crespin, 94 N.M. 486, 612 P.2d 716 (App.1980); State v. Neil, 457 So.2d 481 (Fla.1984); see also McCray v. Abrams, 750 F.2d 1113 (2d Cir. 1984). These courts all conclude that:
If there is a Sixth Amendment requirement that the venire [panel] represent a fair cross section of the community, it must logically be because it is important that the defendant have the change that the petit jury will be similarly constituted. The necessary implication is that the Sixth Amendment guarantees the defendant that possibility. It guarantees not that the possibility will ripen into actuality, but only the fair and undistorted chance that it will. We thus agree that the Sixth Amendment does not require any action to insure that the representative character of the venire be carried over to the petit jury; we think the [Sixth] Amendment simply prohibits the state's systematic elimination of the possibility of such a carry-over.
Id. at 1128-29. To the Second Circuit, and to the state courts just cited, “systematic elimination” does not mean that there is no constitutional violation in a particular case unless there have also been constitutional violations in other cases. Such a standard, of course, makes no sense whatsoever. The constitutional guarantee -makes sense only if it is construed to mean that the state may not use its peremptories in any particular case systematically to strike jurors on the sole basis of affiliation with a cognizable group or minority.
Thus, [the Sixth] Amendment protects each defendant who is to stand trial, not simply the last in a sequence of defendants to suffer the deprivation of an impartial jury. Accordingly, we construe the Sixth Amendment’s provision to require the court to decide each case on the basis of the acts or practices complained of in that very case, and not to require the defendant to show, as Swain requires for an equal protection claim, that those acts or practices have had undesirable effects in case after case. We confess that we are not sure why the Equal Protection Clause should protect only the last of a number of defendants to be subjected to discrimination, but we are sure that it is not sound to extend that proposition to the interpretation of a constitutional provision that is expressly directed to “all” criminal prosecutions.
Accordingly, we conclude that a defendant may appropriately subject to scrutiny under the Sixth Amendment the prosecution’s use of its peremptory challenges on the basis of its actions in his own particular case.
Id. at 1130-31.
I believe, further, that the majority has seriously misread Swain. That case does not hold, as the majority implies, that the use of peremptory challenges to exclude jurors on racial grounds is permissible unless it has occurred in a number of prior eases. Rather, it admonishes us that
[f]or racial discrimination to result in the exclusion from jury service of otherwise qualified groups not only violates our Constitution ... but is at war with our basic concepts of a democratic society and a representative government.
Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. at 204, 85 S.Ct. at 827 (quoting Smith v. State of Texas, 311 U.S. 128, 130, 61 S.Ct. 164, 165, 85 L.Ed. 84 (1940)). Also important is the following precept:
Jurymen should be selected as individuals, on the basis of individual qualifications, and not as members of a race.
Id. (quoting Cassell v. State of Texas, 339 U.S. 282, 286, 70 S.Ct. 629, 631, 94 L.Ed. 839 (1950)). Finally, Swain states that these principles are applicable to all groups:
*545Nor is the constitutional command forbidding intentional exclusion limited to Negroes. It applies to any identifiable group in the community which may be the subject of prejudice.
Id., 308 U.S. at 204-05, 85 S.Ct. at 827 (citing Hernandez v. State of Texas, 347 U.S. 475, 74 S.Ct. 667, 98 L.Ed. 866 (1954)).
These principles established in Swain and the eases which preceded it do not lend themselves to the conclusion that the state may cull the jury in any particular case and that the Constitution is violated only when it can be shown the state has done so in other cases. The requirement for a showing of systematic exclusion in Swain is an evidentiary matter, not a substantive grant of permission for isolated constitutional violation. The court decided that a showing of the state’s exclusion of blacks from a particular trial jury would not establish that the exclusion had been accomplished for the constitutionally impermissible reason of racial discrimination. Swain simply holds that there will be a presumption that the prosecution has used its peremptory challenges for a permissible reason or set of reasons — anything case oriented, rather than race-oriented. It goes on to state:
We have decided that it is permissible to insulate from inquiry the removal of Negroes from a particular jury on the assumption that the prosecutor is acting on acceptable considerations related to the case he is trying, the particular defendant involved, and the particular crime charged ... [However, if] the State has not seen fit to leave a single Negro on any jury in a criminal case, the presumption protecting the prosecutor may well be overcome. Such proof might support a reasonable inference that Negroes are excluded from juries for reasons wholly unrelated to the outcome of the particular case on trial and that the peremptory system is being used to deny the Negro the same right and opportunity to participate in the administration of justice enjoyed by the white population. These ends the peremptory challenge is not designed to facilitate or justify.
Id., 308 U.S. at 223-24, 85 S.Ct. at 837-38.
Thus, Swain does not establish a substantive prosecutorial right to use peremptory challenges to achieve unconstitutional goals. It actually states that such a use would be constitutionally incorrect. It simply establishes a presumption of proper use which can be overcome only on a showing of systematic exclusion. There is no need to apply that evidentiary rule, created under a fourteenth amendment analysis, to a sixth amendment guarantee that is applicable to “all” criminal trials. In fact, the evidentiary rule established by Swain “has been the subject of almost universal and often scathing criticism.” McCray v. New York, 103 S.Ct. at 2440 (opinion of Marshall, J.); State v. Crespin, supra. We need not create presumptions to disguise facts. The evidentiary rule created in Swain’s equal protection analysis has done just that because it has created an insurmountable barrier for defendants. McCray v. Abrams, 750 F.2d at 1120-22. The very nature of the peremptory, the lack of records of group affiliation and the absence of record on use of peremptory challenge make it almost impossible to prove what occurred in other cases. Id.
The majority overlooks, also, the dimensions of the injustice accomplished by improper use of peremptories. The injustice is not primarily visited upon the defendant. I concur today because I do not believe this defendant was personally prejudiced by the removal of the three black jurors from the panel. I do not accept the assumption (evidently made by the prosecutor in the case at bench) that all members of a particular race will be biased. I have no doubt that the white members of this jury were able to judge the evidence fairly and impartially. That evidence shows this defendant’s guilt beyond any doubt, and I write this concurrence only because I believe it necessary to establish a more important rule. The injustice done here is not to the defendant, but to the state, its citizens, and its system of justice. The decisions of our courts are not *546enforced by military law or special police. The measure of the success of such a judicial system is the degree to which our people obey the unenforceable. Our system of justice functions because our citizens respect our courts, believing that justice is administered impartially and without thought to race, religion, ethnic origin, gender, or political belief. That belief is fostered only if justice is administered with an even hand. Thus, the proper functioning of the jury system depends upon three factors. The first is that the jury be representative of the entire community and not the “organ” of any special race, group, or class. Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 86, 62 S.Ct. 457, 472, 86 L.Ed. 680 (1942). The second is that there be no wholesale exclusion of a group or class from the jury, because this would deprive the system of the “insights” and consensus of all segments of the community. Peters v. Kiff, 407 U.S. 493, 510-11, 92 S.Ct. 2163, 2172, 33 L.Ed.2d 83 (1972) (Burger, C.J., dissenting). The “common-sense judgment of the jury ... is surely enriched when all voices can be heard.” Id. The third factor is that it appear that justice is impartially administered.2
Thus, the damage done by enshrining the prosecution’s right to use peremptory challenges in a constitutionally impermissible manner is not necessarily a damage done to the defendant. Rather, it is an
injury to the jury system, to the law as an institution, to the community at large, and to the democratic ideal reflected in the processes of our courts.
Ballard v. United States, 329 U.S. 187, 195, 67 S.Ct. 261, 265, 91 L.Ed. 181 (1946).
In the eyes of minority groups, trial by racially selected juries is simply a demonstration of law being imposed on them by some more powerful group rather than by the participation of all in a common system. It is unavoidable in a country of immigrants that there be a number of minority groups and that there be frictions between them. It has been the genius of America to devise methods of melding minorities into one nation. The majority’s application of the Swain rule to the sixth amendment right to jury trial is not a step forward in this process; it is rather, a step toward balkanizing America. Thus, having been given leave by a majority of the United States Supreme Court to follow either of two interpretations of the sixth amendment guarantee of an impartial jury, I would adopt that which prohibits the state or its agents from using unconstitutional modes of jury selection in any case. In any event, I would choose that interpretation for our state constitution. If it were a question of choosing between the preservation of constitutional right and preservation of the venerated tradition of unfettered challenges, I would stand on the constitution and let tradition bend or give way. I believe, however, that no such choice need be made.
The majority fears that subjecting the use of the peremptory challenge to scrutiny by the trial judge would deprive the state of advantages enjoyed by the defendant and by private litigants. Ante, at 1255-1256. In general, I agree that the state, like private parties, should be free to use peremptories for any reason, but I do not believe the principle permits the state to use peremptory challenges for those reasons which the constitution forbids to the state. The constitution leaves private citizens free to discriminate, but does not confer that privilege upon the state. The assumption that no black is qualified to sit on a jury which will hear a case involving a black defendant is a discriminatory assumption that black people are not as qualified to be fair and impartial judges of evidence as others. The idea that white persons can be objective in deciding a case on its merits even though the defendant is white, but that black people can not when the defendant is black, is the essence of bigotry, for it assumes that all blacks are less objective than whites. The constitu*547tion forbids the state from holding such ideas or, worse, putting them into effect.
The majority argues that supervision of the state’s use of peremptory challenges would disrupt criminal trials, destroy the use of peremptories, or subject prosecutors to unseemly or lengthy questioning with respect to their reasons for challenge. Other states, however, have been following a rule requiring some judicial supervision of challenges without destroying the criminal justice system. Furthermore, in most cases experienced trial judges are well able to understand the reasons that peremptory challenges are used to strike particular jurors. Those reasons are apparent from voir dire examination, from the jurors’ background, from the fact that the prosecutor has unsuccessfully sought to challenge for cause, or for a variety of reasons that prompt the use of the peremptory. The trial judge need interfere only when he suspects (either because of objection or by his own observation) that the prosecutor has embarked upon a systematic use of the peremptory challenge to remove every member of the panel who belongs to the same minority group, and when there is no other apparent reason for such use of the peremptory challenge. The interference, even then, need only be minimal. It is surely not too much to ask the trial judge to inquire at a bench conference whether the prosecutor has any reason, other than that which is constitutionally impermissible, for his exercise of the peremptory. And it is surely not too much to ask the prosecutor to give the trial judge some insight.
I realize full well that the occasional unscrupulous advocate may invent explanations to cover up the impermissible reason for his challenge. No great harm to the defendant will have been done in such cases. But a great deal will have been done towards establishing the proper rule of law — that the state’s system of justice is not blind to reality, but only to the race, religion, ethnic origin, or gender of the person before it. That principle is not established by hortatory admonitions that the state should “seek to do justice” but courts will not scrutinize what it actually does in the process. The law should clearly state that Constitutional principle requires the state to refrain from discrimination and that the courts will do what they can to require the state’s agents to obey the law.

. At oral argument, the state conceded that at least one, if not all, of the black jurors struck by use of the peremptory challenges in this case had served as jurors before, had not been challenged by the state in cases where the defendant was white, and had voted for the state in cases in which they had served. There was nothing in the record to suggest any reason that the black members of the venire would not have fulfilled the state's expectations of fairness and impartiality. Since the trial court refused defendant’s request for a hearing on the issue, and since the prosecutor did not volunteer any reason which might have prompted the use of the peremptory *543on each of the black members on the venire, the state also conceded at oral argument that, for purposes of this appeal, we must assume that the use of the peremptory challenges in this case was racially motivated. I believe it would not be illogical to infer that, in the future, other prosecutors, operating under similar assumptions and the sanction of the majority opinion, may decide to use peremptory challenges to insure that Hispanics be tried by all Anglo juries, Jews by all Christian jurors, women by male jurors, and the like.

. The prohibition against appearances of impropriety is one which governs much of our system of justice. The majority ignores it here, where it is most important.