Commonwealth v. Dinwiddie

OPINION ANNOUNCING THE JUDGMENT OF THE COURT

This is the appeal of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from the order of the Superior Court vacating the judgment of sentence imposed on Grover Dinwiddie (Appellee) by the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County and remanding the matter to that court for a new trial. 373 Pa.Super. 596, 542 A.2d 102. The issue raised by this appeal is whether Appellee established a prima facie case that the prosecutor was using his peremptory challenges to eliminate blacks from the venire panel in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

Appellee was tried on charges of robbery,1 criminal conspiracy,2 possession of instruments of crime,3 bribery,4 and obstruction of the administration of justice.5 Prior to the commencement of trial, the court conducted a voir dire proceeding in order to empanel a jury. Each member of the venire panel was questioned concerning his or her occupation, residence, and family status. Upon the conclusion of this questioning, Appellee and the Commonwealth began to exercise their seven (7) peremptory challenges. At the termination of this process the Commonwealth, in the exercise of six (6) of its peremptory challenges had stricken five (5) blacks from the jury. After the first two blacks were stricken, defense counsel objected, arguing that the prosecutor was using its challenges to purposely discriminate against blacks6 in direct contravention of the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986).77

At the conclusion of the voir dire process, defense counsel, as instructed by the court, again objected, noting that a total of five (5) blacks had been stricken resulting in a jury comprised of ten (10) white and two (2) black jurors.8 The prosecutor also used another peremptory challenge to eliminate a black as the first alternate, resulting in the alternates consisting of one white woman and one black male. In response to each of the two objections raised by defense counsel, the prosecutor, as evidenced by the record, responded that under Batson v. Kentucky he was not obligated to justify the use of his peremptory challenges, as the defense allegedly failed to establish a prima facie showing of systematic exclusion of blacks.

Upon denying Appellee’s motion to have the jury stricken, the trial court noted the final count of the jury for the record as being composed of “one Spanish male, one Puerto Rican,9 four white women, two black women and five white males. The alternates, one white woman and one black male.” (N.T., June 23, 1986, page 46.)

Appellee proceeded to trial, following which the jury found him guilty of all of the aforementioned crimes. Appellee preserved the issue of the prosecutor’s use of his peremptory challenges in post-verdict motions which were denied, and Appellee was sentenced.

On appeal to the Superior Court, Appellee renewed his objections along with two other properly preserved allegations of error. The Superior Court failed to consider these two allegations of error because it agreed with Appellee that he had made a prima facie showing that the prosecutor’s use of his challenges raised an inference that they were racially motivated, and that because the prosecutor refused to provide a racially neutral answer to rebut this inference, the conviction had to be reversed and a new trial granted. Commonwealth v. Dinwiddie, 373 Pa.Superior Ct. 596, 542 A.2d 102 (1988). We now consider whether the evolution of the rule announced in Batson v. Kentucky and its progeny supports the prosecutor’s unilateral refusal to justify or explain his use of peremptory challenges in this matter.

Appellant, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, maintains that simply because some blacks were stricken from the venire by the prosecutor’s use of peremptory challenges, this fact alone is insufficient to establish a prima facie case of discrimination under the rule announced in Batson v. Kentucky. They assert, therefore, that the Superior Court incorrectly adopted what appellants refer to as a per se approach for finding a discriminatory purpose based solely upon numbers. This, it is argued, is insufficient to establish a discriminatory motive on behalf of the prosecution or to demand that the prosecution give non-discriminatory reasons for employing such challenges.

Conversely, Appellee maintains that, absent a valid explanation by the prosecution, any time members of a specific racial or ethnic class are disproportionately excluded from serving on a jury as a result of the prosecution’s use of peremptory challenges, an inference of impropriety necessarily arises. It is further argued that the existence of these egregiously unrepresentative juries deprives the defendants of a fair trial and is a practice which must be rectified.

In Batson, the United States Supreme Court identified those factors relevant to establishing a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination.

To establish such a case, a defendant first must show that he is of a cognizable racial group, and that the prosecutor has exercised peremptory challenges to remove from the venire members of the defendant’s race. Second, the defendant is entitled to rely on the fact, as to which there can be no dispute, that peremptory challenges constitute a jury selection practice that permits “those to discriminate who are of a mind to discriminate’’. Finally, the defendant must show that these facts and any other relevant circumstances raise an inference that the prosecutor used that practice to exclude the veniremen from the petit jury on account of their race. This combination of factors in the empanelling of the petit jury, as in the selection of the venire, raises the necessary inference of purposeful discrimination.

Batson, 476 U.S. at 96, 106 S.Ct. at 1723 (citations omitted).

Instantly, it is undisputed that Appellee is a black man and that the prosecutor exercised his peremptory challenges to strike five (5) blacks from the panel. Defense counsel on two separate occasions made timely objections to the prosecutor’s use of his peremptory challenges and on each occasion the prosecutor refused to justify his use of them. The inference which arises from this course of conduct, we believe, sufficiently satisfies the prima facie requirements to suggest purposeful discrimination under Batson, thus shifting the burden of proof to the prosecution, requiring it to provide an adequate and legitimate explanation for striking the potential black jurors in question.

Pursuant to Batson, once the burden is shifted to the prosecution, the prosecutor must give valid non-discriminatory reasons for the use of his peremptory challenges and it is insufficient to merely state that they were made in good faith. Id. at 96-97, 106 S.Ct. at 1723. Here the prosecutor failed to attempt to comply with that standard. Rather, he unequivocally refused to recognize any obligation on his behalf to provide any explanation whatsoever. Indeed, after the defense had objected to the first two blacks being stricken, the trial judge suggested that if the challenge were to be raised again upon completion of the voir dire process, he would request the prosecutor to explain his reasons for exercising his peremptory challenges. At the end of the voir , dire, with 5 of 6 challenges striking blacks from the panel, the trial judge, notwithstanding, inexplicably refused to elicit an explanation from the prosecutor. Instead, the trial court dismissed defense counsel’s motions as “preposterous.” However, pursuant to Batson, by failing to advance a racially neutral explanation, the prosecutor failed to carry his burden of proof as required and the resulting verdict was thereby “tainted.”

The Commonwealth maintains that while the prosecution’s use of five out of six peremptory challenges to exclude blacks from the jury states a statistical fact, it does not establish a pattern or prima facie case of discriminatory intent. Apparently, the proponents of this argument, including the trial court, are impressed by the fact that not all blacks suffered exclusion from the jury in this case. However, the inference of discrimination arising from the process employed in selecting the jury is not automatically defeated simply because two blacks ultimately survived the process and were seated on the jury.10

The rationale employed by the trial court in concluding that the defendant failed to establish a prima facie case of discrimination more closely parallels that employed by the United States Supreme Court over twenty-five years ago in Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965), which was expressly overruled in Batson v. Kentucky. The Swain Court’s decision was characterized in Batson as requiring a defendant “to show that the prosecution engaged in a systematic pattern of exclusion, based on race, over a series of cases” in order to establish a prima facie case. Batson, 476 U.S. at 92-93, 106 S.Ct. at 1720-21. This would indeed impose upon defendants “a crippling burden of proof,” id. at 92, 106 S.Ct. at 1720, as one cannot expect the prosecution to publicly admit such improper motives. Accordingly, we cannot approve of the trial court implicitly following the Swain Court’s path in attempting to assign to a defendant the Herculean burden of establishing such a discriminatory pattern.

While the differences between peremptory challenges and challenges for cause should remain viable and distinct, the fundamental and guaranteed rights to Equal Protection and the right to a fair trial are inviolable and not to be circumvented or diminished based upon general speculation or semantic argument. Instantly, the Superior Court properly vacated the judgment of sentence imposed by the trial court as that court’s application of the Batson rule placed upon the defendant the unreasonable requirement that he read the prosecutor’s mind and prove his ill motives. As a consequence, the defendant suffered a systematic deprivation of his right to a fair trial. In this matter, at a minimum, sufficient exclusion occurred to require the prosecutor to disclose his “non-discriminatory” reasons. His failure to do so resulted in a spectre of discrimination which lingered over the proceedings and resulted in the deprivation of an individual’s liberty, an effect we cannot accept.

Our rejection of the overly restrictive approach, as applied by the trial court, is bolstered by the more recent pronouncement of the United States Supreme Court explaining its interpretation of the Batson rule. In Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S.-,-, 111 S.Ct. 1364, 1368, 113 L.Ed.2d 411, 422 (1991), the United States Supreme Court, in defining the intended breadth of Batson, held:

In Batson, we spoke of the harm caused when a defendant is tried by a tribunal from which members of his own race have been excluded. But we did not limit our discussion in Batson to that one aspect of the harm caused by the violation. Batson “was designed ‘to serve multiple ends,’ ” only one of which was to protect individual defendants from discrimination in the selection of jurors. Allen v. Hardy, 478 U.S. 255, 259, 92 L.Ed.2d 199, 106 S.Ct. 2878 [2880] (1986) (per curiam) (quoting Brown v. Louisiana, 447 U.S. 323, 329, 65 L.Ed.2d 159, 100 S.Ct. 2214 [2220] (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, 90 L.Ed.2d 69, 106 S.Ct. 1712 [at 1718].

The Powers Court identified the existence of several interests to be safeguarded when examining the jury selection process as a whole. For example, not only are the defendant’s own rights at stake in these matters, but the rights of citizens in general to participate in society’s mechanism of justice by engaging in jury duty are also jeopardized.11 As the Powers Court explained:

We hold that the Equal Protection Clause prohibits a prosecutor from using the state’s peremptory challenges to exclude otherwise qualified and unbiased persons from the petit jury solely by reason of their race, a practice that forecloses a significant opportunity to participate in civic life. An individual juror does not have a right to sit on any particular petit jury, but he or she does possess the right not to be excluded from one on account of race.

Id. 499 U.S. at-, 111 S.Ct. at 1370, 113 L.Ed.2d at 424.

The Court went on to add:

Both the excluded juror and the criminal defendant have a common interest in eliminating racial discrimination from the courtroom. A venireperson excluded from jury service because of race suffers a profound personal humiliation heightened by its public character. The rejected juror may lose confidence in the court and its verdicts, as may the defendant if his or her objections cannot be heard.

Id. 499 U.S. at-, 111 S.Ct. at 1372, 113 L.Ed.2d at 426.

In Powers, the United States Supreme Court upheld a white defendant’s right to object to the prosecution’s exclusion of blacks from the jury through the use of its peremptory challenges in recognition of the broad right of a defendant in having a racially neutral jury selection process. The majority expressly identified the further interest of having any judicial process which places an individual’s life or liberty at stake be completely fair both in perception and reality. The Court emphasized that:

This is not because the individual jurors dismissed by the prosecution may have been predisposed to favor the defendant; if that were true, the jurors might have been excused for cause. Rather, it is because racial discrimination in the selection of jurors “casts doubt on the integrity of the judicial process,” Rose v. Mitchell, 443 U.S. 545, 556, 61 L.Ed.2d 739, 99 S.Ct. 2993 [3000] (1979), and places the fairness of a criminal proceeding in doubt.

Powers, 499 U.S. at-, 111 S.Ct. at 1371, 113 L.Ed.2d at 425.

In applying the totality of those considerations to the matter before us, we agree with the Superior Court that the trial judge was too restrictive in interpreting the requirements of Batson. As the Court in Powers further observed:

[T]he purpose of the jury system is to impress upon the criminal defendant and the community as a whole that a verdict of conviction or acquittal is given in accordance with the law by persons who are fair. The verdict will not be accepted or understood on these terms if the the jury is chosen by unlawful means at the outset. Upon these considerations, we find that a criminal defendant suffers a real injury when the prosecutor excludes jurors at his or her own trial on account of race.

Powers, 499 U.S. at-, 111 S.Ct. at 1372,-113 L.Ed.2d at 426. Thus, the type of invidious discrimination and the resultant undermining of the integrity of the trial process sought to be prohibited by the spirit of Batson and explicitly condemned in Powers, demands no less than a valid prosecutorial justification be given each time peremptory challenges are exercised disproportionately to exclude from juries members of a particular racial class. Absent such a justification, as in the instant matter, the inference of purposeful discrimination, which naturally arises from such a use of peremptory challenges, becomes too strong to withstand constitutional scrutiny.

Accordingly, the order of the Superior Court is affirmed and the matter remanded for a new trial.