Court Opinion

ID: 9664849
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:31:50.027114+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:10.764511
License: Public Domain

LEVY, Justice,
concurring.
More than a century ago, the United States Supreme Court invalidated a West Virginia statute providing that black citizens could not serve as jurors. Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. (Otto) 303, 25 L.Ed. 664 (1880). Although the means used by several states to exclude blacks have since become more subtle, the same pernicious practice has continued. See Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 231-238, 85 S.Ct. 824, 841-46, 13 L.Ed.2d (1965) (Goldberg, J., dissenting). Discrimination within the judicial system — particularly at any stage in the jury selection process — is most invidious because it is “a stimulant to that race prejudice which is an impediment to securing to [blacks] that equal justice which the law aims to secure to all others.” Strauder, 100 U.S. at 308, 25 L.Ed. 664.
In substantive terms, Justice Powell’s opinion for the 7-2 majority in Batson v. Kentucky, 106 S.Ct. 1712 (1986), professes not to go beyond the pronouncements in Swain v. Alabama, that the State’s exclusion from a jury of members of the defendant’s own race, solely on racial grounds, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution of the United States. Where Swain held that the discriminatory use of peremptory challenges was improper, but only if the particular prosecutor discriminated “in case after case, whatever the circumstances, whatever the crime, and whoever the defendant or the victim may be,” 380 U.S. at 223, 85 S.Ct. at 837, the Court now says that striking blacks because they are black in a single case will constitute a constitutional violation. Batson v. Kentucky, 106 S.Ct. at 1722. No longer do evidentiary requirements dictate that “several must suffer discrimination” before one could object. McCray v. New York, 461 U.S. 961, 965, 103 S.Ct. 2438, 2440, 77 L.Ed.2d 1322 (1983) (Marshall, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari); see also Batson v. Kentucky, 106 S.Ct. at 1722.
As this Court’s majority said, quoting Batson, 106 S.Ct. at 1723, the defendant must show, under the new procedure, that he is a member of a cognizable racial group and that the prosecutor has used peremptory strikes to eliminate members of that group from the jury. Because it can be assumed that the exercise of peremptories is inherently subject to discriminatory operation, the defendant next must show “that these facts and any other relevant circumstances raise an inference that the prosecutor used that practice to exclude the veniremen from the petit jury on account of their race.” Batson v. Kentucky, 106 S.Ct. at 1722. If a prima facie case of racially *491motivated discrimination is established, the prosecutor must come forward with an explanation of how “permissible racially neutral selection criteria and procedures have produced the monochromatic result.” Alexander v. Louisiana, 405 U.S. 625, 632, 92 S.Ct. 1221, 1226, 31 L.Ed. 2d 536 (1972).
It is here where my credulity in the instant case is strained “beyond the bursting point.”
The jury panel in the case at bar consisted of 32 qualified jurors, of whom 10 were black. The prosecution used nine of its 10 peremptories to remove every black person except one from the panel, the tenth being struck by defense counsel. With commendable candor, the State conceded that a pri-ma facie case of discrimination had been established, and that appellant, a black, was tried by an all-white jury. The result, indeed, bespeaks discrimination and not chance. More than 40 years ago, when national awareness of racial discrimination was much less sensitive, the Supreme Court held that total or seriously disproportionate exclusion of blacks from jury ve-nires is itself such an “unequal application of the law ... as to show intentional discrimination.” Akins v. Texas, 325 U.S. 398, 404, 65 S.Ct. 1276, 1279, 89 L.Ed. 1692 (1945). It is surely time, then, for courts and prosecutors to remove their racial blinders.
My examination of the prosecutor’s explanations induces me to infer that he was less than Olympian in his racial detachment. In addition to his striking an overwhelmingly disproportionate number of jurors who were black (i.e., all of them), the validity of the “neutral” justifications asserted for doing so is brought into serious question by the triviality and irrelevance of some of the reasons advanced, viz.:
1) age (29 years), social worker, no children, single;
2) unemployed, young, unmarried;
3) had gunshot wound; misspelled “Baptist”;
4) uneducated custodian, address possibly close to appellant;
5) a student, young, probably liberal;
6) unemployed, probably poorly educated, a follower;
7) young, bad address;
8) young (28), bad address;
9) young (30), one child, reason struck unknown.
One might conclude from the foregoing analysis that for a black — but not necessarily a white — to have “qualified” for appellant’s jury, he or she must be over the age of 30, be employed and educated, but not be a custodian or social worker, be married and have more than one child, not be a “follower” or live in a community that is predominantly black, and be able to spell “Baptist.”
If these insubstantial assertions are accepted as rebutting the appellant’s prima facie case, the Equal Protection Clause “would be a vain and illusory requirement.” Norris v. Alabama, 294 U.S. 587, 598, 55 S.Ct. 579, 583, 79 L.Ed. 1074 (1935). Indeed, if all persons were eliminated from the panel on the basis alleged, few if any jury trials could proceed anywhere in Texas. The common element in eliminating all the above veniremen, inconsistent trivialities aside, was race; each of those struck was black, and the prosecutor admitted during the hearing on the motion for new trial:
Although race is a factor I do consider, it is not an overriding factor and it was not an overriding factor in Mr. Speaker’s trial in the selection of these jurors.
This admission alone would, in my judgment, justify a reversal. My reading of Batson indicates that race does not have to be an “overriding” factor, so long as it is influential in the jury selection process. In the eyes of the law, a person’s race is simply irrelevant to his fitness as a juror. Here, the prosecutor struck two black veniremen even though his own rating system evaluated them as more “state-oriented” than whites whom he kept. It is not enough for the prosecutor to say that he acted on an assumption, however intuitive, that the jurors would be biased and partial to the defendant because they are of his race. A prosecutor’s own conscious or un*492conscious racism may easily seduce him into concluding that a prospective black juror is “hostile” or “sullen,” a characterization that would not have come to his mind if a white juror had acted identically. A judge’s own conscious or unconscious racism may lead him to accept such an explanation as well supported. But exclusion of blacks from a jury, primarily because of race, can no more be justified by a stereotypical belief that blacks are less likely to consider impartially the State’s case against a black defendant than it can be justified by the notion that blacks lack the “intelligence, experience, or moral integrity,” Neal v. Delaware, 103 U.S. (Otto) 370, 397, 26 L.Ed. 567 (1881), to be entrusted with that role. Justice Powell wrote for the Supreme Court that “the Equal Protection Clause forbids the prosecutor to chah lenge potential jurors solely on account of their race or on the assumption that black jurors as a group will be unable impartially to consider the State’s case against a black defendant.” Batson, 106 S.Ct. at 1719.
Two years ago, prior to Batson, a similar case alleging racial discrimination in jury selection was before our Court, and in a concurring opinion predicated on the Due Process Clause, I expressed views that still seem relevant today:
Where the prosecutor strikes all members of the venire who are members of a recognizable ethnic group, logic would certainly allow, if not require, the presumption to arise that such striking amounts to systematic exclusion of that group, even if on an ad hoc basis, and thereby shift the burden to the prosecutor, upon timely objection, to justify his action on non-racial grounds or have the jury panel quashed. See Willis v. Zant, 720 F.2d 1212 (11th Cir.1983). Reliance on the good faith of a prosecutor entrusted with participating in the seléction of jurors for the administration of criminal justice is not in itself an investiture of discriminatory power offensive to due process. Representing as it does a living principle, “due process” is not confined within a permanent catalog of what may at a given time be deemed the limits or the essentials of fundamental rights. The right of a prosecutor to peremptory challenges is so established today that it leads to the easy assumption that it is fundamental to the protection of life and liberty and therefore a necessary ingredient of due process of law. But we should not confuse the familiar with the necessary. “Due process” is, perhaps, the least frozen concept of our law, the least confined to history, and the most absorptive of powerful social standards of a progressive society.
Metiers v. State, 695 S.W.2d 88, 91 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 1985, no pet.).
Neither is reliance on a prosecutor’s good faith in the selection of jurors an investiture of discriminatory power offensive to the equal protection of the laws. In a conflict between the Equal Protection Clause and the procedural right of a prosecutor to peremptorily strike venire members, the constitutional guarantee — and the integrity of the jury system — must prevail. The Constitution demands the total, uncompromising racial neutrality of the jury selection process. Such was explicitly absent here, and I must therefore conclude that the trial judge abused his discretion in overruling appellant’s motion for new trial.
It is significant that although the Swain court emphasized the “very old credentials” of the peremptory challenge, 380 U.S. at 212, 85 S.Ct. at 831, Justice Marshall noted while concurring in Batson, 106 S.Ct. at 1729, that the Supreme Court
has also repeatedly stated that the right of peremptory challenge is not of constitutional magnitude, and may be withheld altogether without impairing the constitutional guarantee of impartial jury and fair trial_ If the prosecutor’s peremptory challenge could be eliminated only at the cost of eliminating the defendant’s challenge as well, I do not think that would be too great a price to pay.
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[OJnly by banning peremptories entirely can such discrimination be ended. Id. (citations omitted).
*493I would very much prefer to believe that prosecutors and trial judges will perform their respective duties under the Constitution sensitively and with fastidious impartiality, and thus make abandonment or evisceration of this historic trial practice unnecessary. Most profoundly do I agree with Justice Powell in Batson at 1724: “In view of the heterogeneous population of our nation, public respect for our criminal justice system and the rule of law will be strengthened if we ensure that no citizen is disqualified from jury service because of his race.”