Legal News You Can Use
By Stephen T. Holzer
US Supreme Court: Ninth Circuit Decision “Inexplicable”
The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is known as the most-reversed (by the U.S. Supreme Court) federal appellate court in the country. Now the Supreme Court has added insult to injury by calling a recent Ninth Circuit ruling simply “inexplicable.”
In a unanimous decision, the high court reversed the appellate court’s own reversal of the conviction of an African-American defendant for rape (T. Felkner v. Steve Frank Jackson, No. 279, decided March 21, 2011; http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/10-797.ZPC.html). The defendant had protested the conviction on the basis that the prosecutor had, allegedly on the basis of race, excluded 2 out of 3 potential black jurors.
The defendant argued that, in jury selection, one of the two had advised of various bad encounters with police he had over time experienced. The other potential juror said she had a master’s degree in social work.
The prosecutor justified the exclusions by stating that the first potential juror’s negative police experiences caused worry that the juror might still harbor animosity toward law enforcement and that this was “not something I want to roll the dice with.” As for the second juror, the prosecutor explained that she was excluded because he does not “like to keep social workers” on the jury in a criminal case. So long as the prosecutor’s motivation for the exclusions was race-neutral, there was nothing legally wrong about the exclusions.
However, the defendant argued that the prosecutor’s explanations were pretextual, covering up his true motivation to dismiss black jurors. The defendant pointed out that another potential juror, who is white, also testified about negative police experiences but was allowed to remain on the jury. As for the second potential black juror who was excluded, the defendant argued that, while the prosecutor had asked follow-up questions of other (presumably white) potential jurors regarding their educational backgrounds, this black potential juror was dismissed before any follow-up questions of her were even asked.
The State Court trial Judge and the State Appellate Court rejected these arguments, as did a federal trial Judge, finding that the prosecutor had given a non-race based reasonable explanation for his actions. These courts dismissed the idea that the two potential jurors with negative law-enforcement experience were comparable, in that the dismissed potential juror reported negative experiences lasting over 14 years while the accepted white juror’s negative experiences involved only two isolated incidents. Regarding the various potential jurors’ educational backgrounds, the courts accepted as rational the prosecutor’s explanation that he did not want social workers (no matter their race) on the jury and that the other potential jurors’ educational backgrounds did not involve social services.
The Ninth Circuit disagreed with all three courts. The Ninth Circuit stated, in a brief three-paragraph decision, that “the record reflected different treatment of comparably situated jurors.”
The Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit, stating: “The trial court’s determination is entitled to ‘great deference,”… and ‘must be sustained unless it is clearly erroneous’…”. The high court added:
“Here the trial court credited the prosecutor’s race-neutral explanations, and the California Court of Appeal carefully reviewed the record at some length in upholding the trial court’s findings. The state appellate court’s decision was plainly not unreasonable. There was simply no basis for the Ninth Circuit to reach the opposite conclusion, particularly in such a dismissive manner.”
The high court concluded: the Ninth Circuit’s “decision is as inexplicable as it is unexplained. It is reversed.”
Felkner illustrates that the prosecution’s burden in sustaining decisions to exclude jurors is not particularly onerous—as long as the prosecution can articulate a reasonable , non-race based logic to such a decision, the Courts are not allowed to second-guess the decision. The Felkner case also illustrates that the Ninth Circuit continues to fare poorly at the Supreme Court level, which illustration will no doubt encourage aggrieved appellants to take their chances with asking the Supreme Court to take a fresh look at adverse Ninth Circuit rulings.
Stephen Holzer practices law at the Encino law firm of Lewitt Hackman Shapiro Marshall & Harlan, specializing in business litigation and environmental matters, and is the Immediate Past Chair of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley. He can be reached at sholzer@lewitthackman.com or 818-907-3299 with any questions about this column.