Court Opinion

ID: 9766481
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:51:04.558979+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:23.240628
License: Public Domain

LEVY, Justice,
concurring.
Although I concur with the Court in the disposition of this appeal, it seems appropriate to restate my misgivings about too perfunctory a treatment of appellant’s fourth ground of error. Therein, he asserts a violation of his Equal Protection rights when the State exercised its peremptory challenges to exclude all blacks from the jury.
As stated in my concurring opinion in Metiers v. State, 695 S.W.2d 88, 90-91 (Tex.App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1985, no pet.), “[w]here 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.” Id. at 91. I remain dissatisfied with the subordinate position to which the Equal Protection Clause has been relegated where it conflicts with the procedural right of the prosecutor to peremptorily strike members of the venire who are black.
But, as the Court says, “[u]ntil the Supreme Court announces a new standard, *372the rule in Swain prevails.” Appellant has failed to meet his difficult, if not insurmountable, burden on the issue of systematic exclusion on racial grounds, and therefore Swain requires my agreement that appellant’s fourth ground must be overruled.