Court Opinion

ID: 9731383
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:44:06.58293+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:17.460457
License: Public Domain

ANDERSON, Justice
(concurring specially)-
I concur in the result reached by the majority, but write separately to address the dissent’s concerns relating to the prosecutor’s peremptory challenge. The determination of whether the prosecutor acted with discriminatory intent in exercising a peremptory challenge is essentially a factual determination to be made by the trial court. State v. Scott, 493 N.W.2d 546, 549 (Minn.1992). Because the trial court’s determination largely turns on evaluating the credibility of the prosecutor’s proffered explanation for the challenge, a reviewing court should give that determination “great deference.” Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 98 n. 21, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 1724 n. 21, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). In other words, the trial court’s determination should be upheld unless it is clearly erroneous. United States v. Johnson, 28 F.3d 1487, 1493 (8th Cir.1994), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 768, 130 L.Ed.2d 664 (1995). Unlike the dissent, I defer to the trial court’s finding that the prosecutor’s proffered explanations were “genuine.”
Immediately after the prosecutor exercised the peremptory strike in question, the prosecutor explained that she did so because of the prospective juror’s “ninth grade education level.” At that time, the prosecutor explained that the prospective juror “was having a very difficult time understanding a lot of the terms that we were using.” In response to the prosecutor’s request to research the issue, the trial court agreed to postpone deciding whether the proffered explanation was a pretext for discrimination and agreed to hear arguments on the issue the following morning.
The following,morning, the prosecutor ad-.vaneed three race-neutral explanations for the peremptory strike: the prospective juror’s lack of education; the prospective juror’s nervous demeanor; and the prospective juror’s reluctance to sit in judgment. The trial court recognized that all three of these explanations have been held to qualify as *18raee-neutral reasons to strike a prospective juror. See State v. Davis, 504 N.W.2d 767 (Minn.1993), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 114 S.Ct. 2120, 128 L.Ed.2d 679 (1994); United States v. Hinojosa, 958 F.2d 624, 632 (5th Cir.1992); State v. McRae, 494 N.W.2d 252, 257 (Minn.1992). Focusing on the first and the third of the proffered explanations, the trial court found that the prosecutor’s race-neutral explanations for the challenge were “genuine.”
The dissent quotes from United States v. Biaggi, 909 F.2d 662, 679 (2nd Cir.1990), cert. denied, 499 U.S. 904, 111 S.Ct. 1102, 113 L.Ed.2d 213 (1991), as authority for the proposition that “[pjostponing consideration of a Batson claim * * * risks infecting what would have been the prosecutor’s spontaneous explanations with contrived rationalizations.” But the holding in Biaggi does not support the broad proposition advanced by the dissent. It is clear that the court’s concern in Biaggi related to the defendants’ failure to raise a Batson claim until after the conclusion of the trial. See Biaggi, 909 F.2d at 678-79. The court in Biaggi explained that if the defendant postpones raising a Batson claim “until the trial is in progress, or even completed, as in this case, [such delay] risks infecting what would have been the prosecutor’s spontaneous explanations with contrived rationalizations, and may create a subtle pressure for even the most conscientious district judge to accept explanations of borderline plausibility to avoid the only relief then available, a new trial.” Id. at 679.
In the present case, there was no “subtle pressure” to accept explanations of borderline plausibility because the prosecutor’s challenge and the defendant’s attendant Bat-son claim both occurred during the process of jury selection. Furthermore, contrary to the position of the dissent, the court in Biaggi recognized that a peremptory challenge and its attendant Batson claim need not occur contemporaneously with the questioning of the prospective juror, but may occur at any time during the process of jury selection. Id.; see also State v. Kitto, 373 N.W.2d 307, 310-11 (Minn.1985) (explaining that “the right to make a peremptory challenge expires either when the attorney accepts the juror or when the juror is sworn, whichever is earlier,” and “[t]he period during which the trial court has discretion to permit a peremptory challenge begins when the right to make the challenge expires and continues until the entire jury has been impaneled”) (emphasis added).
I agree with the dissent that a prosecutor’s delay in presenting a race-neutral explanation for a peremptory strike may appear to undermine the sincerity of that explanation. But a trial court may consider all relevant factors in determining whether a prosecutor’s explanations are worthy of belief. In the present case, the trial court was fully cognizant of the overnight delay and, nevertheless, concluded that the prosecutor’s explanations were worthy of belief. This conclusion is not clearly erroneous, and I defer to the trial court’s finding that the prosecutor’s proffered explanations were “genuine.”
I concur.