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State v. Gomez10/13/2005
S. 255, 259 (1986) (per curiam) (quoting Brown v. Louisiana, 447 U.S. 323, 329 (1980)). Batson recognized that a prosecutor's discriminatory use of peremptory challenges harms the excluded jurors and the community at large. 476 U.S. at 87.
Powers, 499 U.S. at 406 (emphasis added). The Court reiterated this point in Edmonson when it said:
While the * * * decisions [culminating in Batson] were for the most part directed at discrimination by a prosecutor or other government officials in the context of criminal proceedings, we have not intimated that race discrimination is permissible in civil proceedings. Indeed, discrimination on the basis of race in selecting a jury in a civil proceeding harms the excluded juror no less than discrimination in a criminal trial. In either case, race is the sole reason for denying the excluded venireperson the honor and privilege of participating in our system of justice.
Edmonson, 500 U.S. at 618-19 (citations omitted) (emphasis added).
If peremptory challenges based on race were permitted, persons could be required by summons to be put at risk of open and public discrimination as a condition of their participation in the justice system.
Id. at 628.
The quiet rationality of the courtroom makes it an appropriate place to confront race-based fears or hostility by means other than the use of offensive stereotypes. Whether the race generality employed by litigants to challenge a potential juror derives from open hostility or from some hidden and unarticulated fear, neither motive entitles the litigant to cause injury to the excused juror.
Id. at 631 (emphasis added). Thus, it is clear that it is not only the criminal defendant who is protected from discrimination during the jury selection process--it is also the venireperson and the community at large.
C. The Role of the Court
Under our advocacy-based system, part of the duty to protect the rights of the venireperson and the community at large falls to the prosecutor and defense counsel, both of whom are officers of the court. But there is another actor on the scene who has an obligation to see that discrimination does not occur. This is the trial court. The Supreme Court explained the underlying basis for the trial court's obligation in Powers when the Court said:
The Fourteenth Amendment's mandate that race discrimination be eliminated from all official acts and proceedings of the State is most compelling in the judicial system. We have held, for example, that prosecutorial discretion cannot be exercised on the basis of race, and that, where racial bias is likely to influence a jury, an inquiry must be made into such bias. The statutory prohibition on discrimination in the selection of jurors, 18 U.S.C. ยง 243, enacted pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment's Enabling Clause, makes race neutrality in jury selection a visible, and inevitable, measure of the judicial system's own commitment to the commands of the Constitution. The courts are under an affirmative duty to enforce the strong statutory and constitutional policies embodied in that prohibition.
499 U.S. at 415-16 (citations omitted) (emphasis added). Later that same term, the Court in Edmonson again highlighted this obligation when it specifically said that the trial court is a direct and indispensable participant in preventing discrimination during jury selection. The Court said:
Without the direct and indispensable participation of the judge, who beyond all question is a state actor, the peremptory challenge system would serve no purpose. By enforcing a discriminatory peremptory challenge, the court "has not only made
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