Court Opinion

ID: 9499281
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:42:57.095982+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:23.333632
License: Public Domain

BERZON, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I join in the majority opinion and Judge Wardlav/s persuasive concurrence. I add, however, the following observations: Because this case arises as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, we cannot and do not address directly the constitutional standard properly applicable at the second stage of the inquiry under Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). Instead, we are restricted to deciding whether the state court decision is contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, “clearly established” Supreme Court law. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). I agree with Judge Wardlaw that it is at least true that, under “clearly established” Supreme Court law, the Bat-son standard is no less protective of racial equality than the standard applied in Equal Protection Clause cases generally.
There is, however, a strong argument that the Batson standard should be stricter than the one Judge Wardlaw ably explicates as generally embedded in Equal Protection Clause cases. See Wilkerson v. Texas, 493 U.S. 924, 110 S.Ct. 292, 107 L.Ed.2d 272 (1989) (Marshall, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). In a ease arising on direct appeal rather than on habeas, I might well hold, as the dissenters in Wilkerson suggested, that in Bat-son cases, the Equal Protection Clause forbids a prosecutor from exercising a peremptory challenge to dismiss a juror whenever a motivating factor for the dismissal is race-based, without permitting *377the prosecutor to establish that he would have challenged the juror absent the race-based motive.