Court Opinion

ID: 9737341
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:22:26.66031+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:23:58.227023
License: Public Domain

CHIEF JUSTICE CLARK, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. The majority’s decision to remand these cases by supervisory order, and without a finding as to whether the defendants have made out a prima facie case under Batson v. Kentucky (1986), 476 U.S. 79, 90 L. Ed. 2d 69, 106 S. Ct. 1712, is both bad policy and bad law. It serves neither the public interest in speedy adjudication of appellate cases, nor the judicial interest in their economical and expeditious resolution. It also represents an abdication of our solemn responsibility, as the highest appellate court in Illinois, to provide our trial courts with needed guidance — to tell them what the law is. I deal first with the majority’s apparent decision to evade the question of whether the defendants below made out a prima facie case of discriminatory use of peremptory challenges under Batson. Whether, under Bat-son, the facts and circumstances involved in the use of peremptory challenges raise an inference that the exclusion of veniremen was racially motivated was an issue raised, argued, and fully briefed to this court in all of these cases. While Batson was not decided until after the defendants were convicted, the decision was announced while the direct appeals were pending, and the parties took the opportunity to argue the existence of a prima facie Batson case either in their initial briefs, in their supplemental briefs, and/or in oral argument. Given this history, I frankly do not understand what purpose is served by having these cases remanded to the trial court for a hearing on whether there was a prima facie case, after which the parties will presumably have to rehash and rebrief this same issue. The resulting delay and waste of resources would only be justifiable if, at a hearing on a prima facie Bat-son case, the trial court was actually in a position to develop evidence or information which would aid in our later review. In fact, however, the trial court will be confronted with the same cold record which now confronts us. The crucial facts and circumstances involved in the use of the peremptory challenges are the race of the veniremen peremptorily challenged by the prosecutor, the total number of challenges he uses, and the characteristics of the veniremen challenged, as revealed by the record of their answers during the voir dire. All of these facts and circumstances are currently available to us. The only possible source of information which the trial court might have, and which we do not, would be derived from the trial court’s memory of the demeanor of the individual veniremen challenged. I do not believe this source justifies the scope of the majority’s remand, for three reasons. First, the advanced age of these cases makes it extremely unlikely that the trial judges involved will actually be able to recall the demeanor of individual veniremen and make reliable judgments on that basis. Second, I do not believe that the demeanor of a venireman is the kind of factor which should form part of the defendant’s prima facie case. The defendant is not really in a position to prove that a venireman’s demeanor did not justify the prosecutor’s use of his peremptory challenges. The prosecutor will be in a much better position, if he so wishes, to use a venireman’s demeanor as part of his neutral explanation for peremptorily challenging a venireman. Third, even this use of demeanor evidence must be viewed with extreme caution, since it may be all too easy for a prosecutor to use it as a subterfuge for peremptorily challenging a venireman on the basis of race. Moreover, by evading the issue of whether a prima facie case has been made out, the majority has put the onus on the trial courts to make the first, crucial determinations of this issue. Having access only to a mass of contradictory precedent from other jurisdictions, and lacking authoritative guidance from this court, they may well reach inconsistent conclusions. In cases where the trial court erroneously finds that the defendant has not made out a prima facie case, we may eventually be required to order a second remand. If the trial court later erroneously accepts or rejects the prosecutor’s explanation, we may be required to reverse yet again. A single issue, which might have been briefed and argued once, will have been briefed and argued thrice. As a reviewing court, we cannot postpone indefinitely our responsibility to tell our trial courts what the law is. There is no need, in these cases, to postpone it at all. Nor do I believe that the particular way in which the United States Supreme Court structured its decision in Batson should be determinative. While the court remanded Batson to the trial court for a determination of whether there was a prima facie case, the scope of its remand need not determine ours. In Batson, the Court overruled Swain v. Alabama (1965), 380 U.S. 202, 13 L. Ed. 2d 759, 85 S. Ct. 824, which effectively precluded defendants from proving any case of racially motivated use of peremptory challenges violative of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment. The defendant in Batson, however, had relied instead on the sixth amendment. (476 U.S. 79, 108-10, 90 L. Ed. 2d 69, 95-97, 106 S. Ct. 1712, 1729-30 (Stevens, J., dissenting).) Thus, the Court in Batson was not given the benefit of briefing or argument as to whether the facts and circumstances presented supported a prima facie case of racially motivated exclusion. While the court might have ordered reargument and rebriefing on the fourteenth amendment question, as suggested by Chief Justice Burger and Justice Rehnquist (476 U.S. 79, 115-17, 90 L. Ed. 2d 69, 99-101, 106 S. Ct. 1712, 1732-33 (Burger, J., dissenting)), it instead decided to remand to the trial court for the initial determination of a prima facie case. Our situation is entirely different. Nearly a year has passed since Batson. The parties in these cases have extensively briefed and argued the question of a prima facie case. There is now a considerable body of persuasive precedent on this question from other jurisdictions to guide us. Under these circumstances, a remand to the trial court, at least in situations where it appears that the trial court will not be able to discover any facts other than those already in the record, is pointless. And while I have “confidence that trial judges, experienced in supervising voir dire, will be able to decide if the circumstances concerning the prosecutor’s use of peremptory challenges creates a prima facie case of discrimination against black jurors” (476 U.S. 79, 97, 90 L. Ed. 2d 69, 88, 106 S. Ct. 1712, 1723), I am not equally confident that they will be able to so decide without any guidance at all from the appellate courts. Therefore, assuming that a prima facie case has been made out in any of these cases, we should remand only to give the prosecutors involved an opportunity to establish a neutral explanation. A remand for this purpose would not be a waste of limited judicial resources, for two reasons. First, since the trials in these cases took place prior to Batson, and the trial courts never ruled that the defendants had made out prima facie cases, the prosecutors were not put on notice that a neutral explanation for their challenges was required. Second, the prosecutor’s proof of a neutral explanation will depend partly upon his credibility and demeanor, matters which the trial court will be in a better position to determine. Thus, the proper course in these cases would be either to determine that there is no prima facie case, and thus no need for a remand, or that there is a prima facie case, and thus a remand for proof of a neutral explanation is required. Even were I to agree with the scope of the majority’s remand, I would still not agree with the majority’s decision to remand by supervisory order. Some of these cases contain other issues, some of which are likely to arise on retrial, as well as others which must be considered even if the Batson claim should fail. To delay decision on these other issues, particularly in capital cases, serves no useful purpose whatsoever. For these reasons, I dissent. JUSTICE SIMON joins in this dissent.