Court Opinion

ID: 9488320
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:41:51.444757+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:49.121365
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I believe that under Batson, the difficulties are more serious and the analysis more complex than indicated by the majority. In light of the clear existence of one impermissible motive behind the prosecution’s strike of Ms. Reed, I believe that remand is warranted to determine whether Reed would have been empaneled in the absence of this motive.
It is appropriate to think about the prosecution’s reasons for striking Reed as involving two separate motivations, though they may have been articulated as one. First, the prosecutors were concerned because Reed was closely related to the victim of an unpro-secuted crime (suggesting that she might be biased toward the prosecutor’s office). One of the prosecutors, Ms. Patton, in fact stated that this was her only reason for excluding Reed. This is rather clearly a legitimate race-neutral reason of the type that insulates a prosecutor’s action from challenge.
Second, however, race motivated the prosecutors. Mr. Miller stated that race was a concern “as it related to her brother being shot and killed in Will County, the charges being dropped, and then the victim in the instant case being white and the defendant being black.” They were thus concerned that because Ms. Reed was Africaov-Ameri-can she might harbor animosity toward a prosecutor’s office that prosecuted a crime against a Caucasian victim (in fact asking for the death penalty), yet had failed to prosecute that same crime when the victim was African-American. This is precisely what Batson prohibits — the striking of a juror because of a presumed racial identification with the defendant. 476 U.S. at 97, 106 S.Ct. at 1723 (impermissible to engage in assumption that jurors “would be partial to the defendant because of their shared race”). While the prosecutors did not necessarily assume Reed would be partial to the defendant simply because she shared his race, they did believe that race might be a motive in her decision-making-namely, they worried that she would be influenced by racial sympathy insofar as a crime against an African-Ameri*391can went unprosecuted, but a crime against a Caucasian did not. A strike based on an assumption that African-American jurors would be so concerned in capital cases involving a Caucasian victim and an African-American defendant would clearly violate the Equal Protection Clause. See United States v. Brown, 817 F.2d 674, 676 (10th Cir.1987) (striking African-American jurors because of assumption that they knew and respected well-known African-American defense counsel violated Batson).
The majority’s analysis, which lumps the two factors motivating the prosecutors together, should not thus succeed in insulating the strike of Reed from challenge. The prosecutors’ stated reasons for striking Ms. Reed must be understood as two separate reasons. The fact of Reed’s relation to the victim of an unprosecuted crime has nothing to do with her race. But when her race is considered under selective prosecution, that consideration suggests that the prosecutors believed that any antagonism she might have harbored toward the prosecutor’s office could have been enhanced or aggravated. The concerns enunciated by the prosecution are separate.
The question, therefore, is whether the existence of a criterion specific only to Reed (her relationship to a victim of an unprose-euted crime) is sufficient to overcome an impermissible motive (the assumption that because Reed was African-American she would be concerned about selective prosecution).1 Here, Holder can cogently argue that both reasons prompted the strike of Ms. Reed. That is, Holder can argue that, in the absence of either motive, Reed would not have been struck; the prosecutors did not strike Caucasian jurors who had similar “brushes” with the law. This factor at least raises the inference that concerns about selective prosecution weighed more heavily in prosecutors’ minds than they were willing to admit. Viewing the issue in this light places us squarely in the context of mixed motive analysis. Other courts confronted with similar mixed motive situations have ordered remand to determine whether the same action would have been taken in absence of the impermissible motive.
The Second Circuit announced the remand rule in Howard v. Senkowski, 986 F.2d 24 (2d Cir.1993). There, the prosecutor admitted to having impermissible motivations (namely, to assuming that African-American jurors would be more sympathetic to African-American defendants), but claimed that the jurors would have been struck anyway. The Second Circuit held that “[ojnce the claimant has proven improper motivation, dual motivation analysis is available to the person accused of discrimination to avoid liability by showing that the same action would have been taken in the absence of the improper motivation that the claimant has proven.” 986 F.2d at 27. The court therefore remanded for the purpose of making this determination. I believe that we must proceed by mixed motive analysis here.
It is no answer, contrary to the majority’s opinion, to suggest that Batson only prohibits strikes occurring “solely” on the basis of race. The Second Circuit rather resoundingly rejected the logic of this argument in Howard, 986 F.2d at 28-29. The Second Circuit refused to attach significance to Bat-son ’s use of the adverb “solely,” and proceeded by the more standard equal protection analysis — namely, when two motives seemed to .have influenced the decision-maker, that party has the right to prove that the same decision would have been made even in the absence of the impermissible motive.
Under this mixed motive analysis, Holder has a strong argument that remand is appropriate insofar as it would enable the district court to consider the issue precisely in light of the standard that I have discussed. Although the district court has already grappled to a degree with this problem (it found that the Caucasian jurors’ “brushes” with the law were much less significant than that of Reed), precise findings would be more help-*392fill. It is not necessarily clear that an invidious motive prompted the strike of Reed. Other African-American jurors do not appear to have been struck because of concerns about selective prosecution. And only one of the prosecutors articulated the impermissible reason for striking Reed. These factors, taken together, strengthen the prosecution’s case. Yet neither is it clear that the prosecution would have refused to empanel Reed in the absence of concerns about selective prosecution. Reed did state that her ability to be fair to the prosecution was not impaired by the incident involving her brother. For these reasons, remand is desirable.
I therefore respectfully dissent to the extent indicated.

. An argument has been made that the mere existence of one impermissible reason tainted the decision-making process and violated Batson. See Wilkerson v. Texas, 493 U.S. 924, 110 S.Ct. 292, 107 L.Ed.2d 272 (1989) (denying petition for certiorari) (Marshall, J., dissenting; joined by Brennan, J.) (suggesting that mixed motive analysis is inappropriate in the framework of per-emptories).