attorney’s impression of a prospective juror’s demean- or is a legitimate, race-neutral reason
How later courts described this case
- attorney’s impression of a prospective juror’s demean- or is a legitimate, race-neutral reason
- trial court did not err in accepting as neutral a prosecutor’s striking four prospective jurors who “had a familiarity with the location where this incident was alleged to have taken place,” while accepting three others, as part of over all strategy
- plurality Opinion by Beck, J.
- Concurring Opinion by Cirillo, P.J.
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
TAMILIA, Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the result as I believe under the present state of the law and rules of criminal procedure the trial court must be affirmed. I believe that conducting a review of the prosecutor’s motives several months after voir dire is totally inadequate for purposes of ascertaining his intent at the time the juror was challenged. Likewise, a procedure attacking the peremptory challenges because of race following the selection of the jurors but prior to impaneling them for trial would prove cumbersome and unworkable.
Since we are increasingly becoming a multi-racial and multi-heritage society, to eliminate the taint of bias in jury selection, it may be time to explore revising the use of peremptory challenges so that striking a juror peremptorily in the first instance must be justified for one or more of the factors which Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 , 106 S.Ct. 1712 , 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), considered to be a neutral *71 reason. Cutting through the verbiage and rationale which surround cases of this nature, it appears evident that striking jurors of minority race or background is prima facie discrimination whether the defendant is a minority or not. It would impose no great burden on the prosecutor or defense counsel (if jury selection is to be even handed) to provide explanations for peremptory challenges, which do not have to reach the specificity and particularity of challenges for cause. If such a procedure was presently available, I would not hesitate to reverse the trial court and remand for a new jury trial.