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State v. Gomez10/13/2005
s a juror. Thus, it appears the court ultimately excused venireperson 21 after concluding that the state's strike was not racially motivated and therefore legitimate.
At this point, it is important to note that the majority's citation to Johnson v. California is largely inapposite to the issue before us. Johnson focuses on the first prong of Batson and holds that, to establish a prima facie case, the objector to a peremptory strike need not prove that it is "more likely than not that the other party's peremptory challenges * * * were based on impermissible group bias." Johnson, 125 S.Ct. at 2412. Here, the majority and I agree that the first prong of Batson has been satisfied. The majority opinion misapplies the quote from Johnson, which states " he Batson framework is designed to produce actual answers to suspicions and inferences that discrimination may have infected the jury selection process." See id. at 2418. The majority inappropriately emphasizes the word "actual" from the quote to imply that the Supreme Court is establishing a requirement for an actual peremptory strike before the trial court can act to prevent discrimination. The Court does indicate that the trial court should not speculate about race neutral reasons on a party's behalf, but the Court does so only because the trial court is then deprived of the opportunity to determine the real reason behind the party's strike of venirepersons from a protected racial group. See id. As noted earlier, this is not the case here. The significance of the quoted language from Johnson appears to be that the Batson framework is a mechanism to show actual bias on the part of the party who struck a venireperson from a protected racial group. Notably, the Court in Johnson did not criticize the trial court for taking a proactive role, as is the majority's concern here.
Undoubtedly, the trial court here is open to some criticism that it acted too quickly and did not dot all the i's and cross all the t's when it conducted the Batson analysis. Nevertheless, despite my agreement with the majority that the court did not handle this situation as well as it could have, I conclude that it is far too great a reach to conclude that the court erred, much less that the errors were structural. The court ultimately found that the state's reasons for striking venireperson 21 were unrelated to any discriminatory act against her and the record supports this finding. Such a finding is within the discretion of the court and we should defer to that discretion. State v. White, 684 N.W.2d 500, 506 (Minn. 2004). To do otherwise results in the imposition of an overly technical interpretation of Batson that will render the proper implementation of Batson by the trial court nearly impossible.
At this point, I must add that I am concerned that what we did in State v. Angus, 695 N.W.2d 109 (Minn. 2005), and what we are doing here may affect legitimate efforts to root out impermissible discrimination in the jury selection process. It appears to me that the parties, especially the state, are now ill-advised to exercise a peremptory challenge of a member of a protected class out of concern that if the trial court does not precisely follow the three-step Batson inquiry--or the now five-step Angus-Batson inquiry--a resulting conviction will be reversed. Moreover, even if all procedures are followed, a Batson objection will be very difficult to sustain under the criteria we established in Angus. In my view, our most recent Batson jurisprudence is long on form, short on substance, and largely ineffectual in providing a remedy for discrimination during the jury selection process. See Johnson, 125 S.Ct. at 2410-12.
Finally, I also wish to address the majority's
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