State of Iowa v. Peter Leroy Veal ( 2019 )

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF IOWA
No. 17–1453
Filed May 24, 2019
STATE OF IOWA,
Appellee,
vs.
PETER LEROY VEAL,
Appellant.
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Cerro Gordo County,
Rustin T. Davenport Judge.
The defendant appeals his convictions for first-degree murder and
attempted murder, challenging the jury pool and raising several other
claims of error. AFFIRMED ON CONDITION AND REMANDED WITH
DIRECTIONS.
Dylan J. Thomas, Mason City, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Louis S. Sloven and Scott D.
Brown, Assistant Attorneys General, and Carlyle T. Dalen, County
Attorney, for appellee.
Russell E. Lovell, II, Des Moines, and David S. Walker, Windsor
Heights, for amicus curiae NAACP.
2
MANSFIELD, Justice.
I. Introduction.
This double homicide case presents important questions concerning
a defendant’s right to an impartial jury drawn from a fair cross section of
the community, as well as a number of other trial-related issues. The
defendant, an African-American, was charged with committing two
murders in Cerro Gordo County and attempting to commit a third.
Because of pretrial publicity he asked for a change of venue, and the trial
was moved to Webster County. Although the Webster County jury venire
contained five African-Americans, no African-American was seated on the
jury that actually heard the defendant’s case. The State exercised a
peremptory strike on the last remaining African-American on the panel
because the State’s lead prosecutor in this case had also prosecuted her
father successfully for murder. Following a jury trial, the defendant was
convicted.
On appeal, we affirm the district court’s ruling that there was no
Batson violation in the striking of the juror. 1 We also reject the defendant’s
claims of a speedy trial violation, prosecutorial error, evidentiary error,
lack of competence to stand trial, and insufficient evidence to sustain his
convictions. However, we believe further consideration of the defendant’s
fair-cross-section claim is warranted in light of the decision we are filing
today in State v. Lilly, ___ N.W.2d ___ (Iowa 2019). Therefore, we
conditionally affirm while remanding for further proceedings consistent
with Lilly and this opinion.
1See Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S. Ct. 1712 (1986).
3
II. Background Facts and Proceedings.
At about 2:00 a.m. on November 17, 2016, Mason City police officer
Jennifer Barr was on patrol when she received a call from the dispatcher.
An individual named Ron Willis, calling from outside Caleb Christensen’s
house, reported that Peter Veal had shot Willis’s cousin and hit Willis on
the head with a pistol. While en route to the location identified by the
dispatcher, Officer Barr saw Veal walking in her direction. Veal was
wearing a “light green coat,” jeans, and a hat. Veal stopped when Officer
Barr began to pull her patrol vehicle over. As soon as Officer Barr directed
her spotlight toward Veal and made eye contact with him, he took off
running. Officer Barr tried to pursue Veal but was unable to locate him.
When Veal was subsequently apprehended, he was shirtless and
hatless, and it was apparent that his hands and jeans were very bloody.
Veal also had mist drops of blood on his face. Veal had a cut on his hand,
which he claimed to have received from jumping a fence, although the cut
was on the top—not the bottom—of his hand.
Meanwhile, at Christensen’s house, two people were dead. Melinda
Kavars, Willis’s cousin, was dead from a single gunshot wound.
Christensen had been stabbed to death as a result of multiple knife
wounds. The semiautomatic handgun used to kill Kavars was found at
the scene with a jammed cartridge inside.
The police spotted Willis outside Christensen’s house. He was
shaking, sobbing, and crying. He informed police that Veal had shot
Kavars and had tried to shoot him but the gun had malfunctioned. Willis
explained that he had run out of the house. He expressed concern for the
fate of Christensen. Willis had a cut on the top of his head where he said
Veal had struck him with the gun.
4
There was a bloody trail beginning in the house that continued all
the way to the location where Veal was apprehended. Along the trail, police
found several items discarded by Veal—a hat, a cellphone, a green jacket,
a shirt, and a folding knife.
A footprint analysis confirmed that the bloody footprints in the
house matched the shoes Veal had been wearing. There was no trace or
trail of blood out the door where Willis had exited.
DNA analysis confirmed the presence of Christensen’s blood on
Veal’s discarded knife and shirt. Christensen’s blood was also found on
the jeans and shoes Veal was still wearing when apprehended. Veal’s
shirt, jeans, and shoes also contained evidence of his own blood.
An analysis of the gun determined that Willis’s skin tissue was on
the back of the slide. This was consistent with Willis’s claim that Veal had
struck Willis with the gun after it jammed when Veal tried to shoot Willis.
The gun also had DNA from an unknown contributor on the textured
portion of the pistol grip, but the sample was too weak to determine the
source of the DNA.
Willis knew both Veal and Christensen. Willis later testified that on
November 16, at around 7:00 p.m., Willis received a call from Veal, who
wanted to hang out. Willis picked up Veal and bought beer from a liquor
store before the two of them arrived at Christensen’s home at around 8:00
or 8:30 p.m. Willis introduced Veal to Christensen.
Later, Willis and Veal left and went over to Kavars’s home. As noted,
Kavars was Willis’s cousin. She had invited Willis over for an early
Thanksgiving dinner. Willis introduced Veal to Kavars. While at Kavars’s
house, Veal cut two lines of methamphetamine with a pocket knife. Kavars
and Veal inhaled methamphetamine through a straw, and Willis smoked
5
marijuana. After about forty minutes, the three of them went over to
Christensen’s house. They likely arrived after midnight.
At Christensen’s house, the four of them socialized in the living
room. Willis and Veal drank beer, Kavars drank Vodka, and Christensen
drank whiskey. Veal indicated at some point that he was not feeling well.
Willis told him to go outside and get some fresh air. Veal left for about ten
or fifteen minutes. When he came back in, he sat down briefly, but then
he got back up and went to the bathroom.
Shortly thereafter, Veal returned from the bathroom and sat down.
Willis and Kavars were talking and laughing when suddenly Willis saw
Veal abruptly rise from his seat and shoot Kavars in the throat with a
pistol. Willis could not see the location from which Veal had obtained the
gun. Willis observed blood coming from Kavars’s throat, and he watched
her take her final breaths.
Veal then turned the pistol on Willis. Willis pled with him not to
shoot. “I got kids, Peter,” he told him. Veal attempted to fire but the gun
jammed. Veal hit Willis on the right side of the head with the pistol.
As this was happening, Christensen was frozen on the couch. Willis
saw Veal trying to get the jammed round out of the pistol, and Willis
started running, believing Christensen would be following him. By the
time Willis reached the side exterior door in the kitchen, the place was
dark because the only lamp being used in the house had gone out. Willis
managed to unlock the door in the dark and exit the house. The last thing
he heard Christensen say as he was departing was, “What the f___ are you
doing?”
Once out of the home, Willis ran across the street and called 911.
Willis later saw Veal leave the house and run south. Willis remained
across the street and called some friends who arrived and helped calm him
6
down. When the police came, Willis remained at the scene. He gave the
police permission to search his vehicle, and he agreed to go to the police
station to make a statement.
On November 23, the State filed a trial information in the Iowa
District Court for Cerro Gordo County charging Veal with two counts of
first-degree murder for the deaths of Kavars and Christensen and one
count of attempted murder with respect to Willis. See Iowa Code §§ 707.1,
.2(1)(a), .11 (2017). Because of the publicity surrounding the case, Veal
sought a change of venue, and the trial was moved to Webster County.
The parties appeared for trial on Monday, July 10, 2017. Of the
Webster County jury pool of 100 people who had returned juror surveys,
eighty-seven of them checked in at the courthouse that morning.
Veal is African-American. However, of those in the jury pool who
reported their ethnicity, only one juror had self-identified as African-
American, and she did not appear on July 10. Webster County is
approximately 4.6% African-American. 2
Before voir dire began, Veal objected to the jury venire. He alleged
a violation of his Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial based on
underrepresentation and systematic exclusion of African-Americans from
the jury selection process.
The court initially gave the defense until later that day to investigate
its claim of underrepresentation and systematic exclusion. Further
discussions took place on the record during the course of the day, and the
2In the district court, defense counsel asserted that Webster County was 5.5%
African-American according to 2016 census data; the State asserted that it was 4.1%,
citing our Plain opinion. See State v. Plain, 898 N.W.2d 801, 825 (Iowa 2017) (referencing
a 4.1% figure for Webster County in 2013). In its amicus brief, the NAACP uses a 4.6%
number for the African-American population of Webster County drawn from 2017 census
data. The NAACP states that both the 5.5% and 4.1% figures are “clearly erroneous,” the
4.1% number from Plain being “too old.” We take judicial notice of the 4.6% figure, which
we believe to be more accurate as of the time of trial in this case.
7
court ultimately agreed to conduct a hearing on July 11. Because July 10
was the ninetieth day for speedy trial purposes, the court found good cause
to extend the speedy trial deadline to July 11.
In an attempt to increase the number of African-Americans in the
venire, the court summoned an additional jury pool to appear on the 11th.
The court also instructed the sheriff to contact the jurors who had been
summoned but had not appeared on the 10th.
With the extra jury pool, there were 153 potential jurors available at
the courthouse on July 11. 3 Five were African-American. 4 Meanwhile,
defense counsel had completed a historical review of jury questionnaires
in Webster County for all of 2016. They reported to the court that the
overall African-American percentage of Webster County jury pools that
year was approximately 1.3%. Veal moved to strike the jury panel and
dismiss the case, arguing the State had systematically excluded and
underrepresented African-Americans in its jury pools in violation of the
Sixth Amendment and that it was too late to fix the problem given the
speedy trial deadline.
The district court denied the motions, noting that the additional pool
had redressed to some extent the lack of African-American jurors in the
original pool. As the court explained in its subsequent written ruling,
The Court denied Defendant’s motion [to strike the jury panel]
based on both the second and third part of the Duren [v.
Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 99 S. Ct. 644 (1979)] test. The Court
found that with the addition of Pool 2 and the availability of
additional jurors who self-identified as African-American, at
least in part, that the representation of African-Americans was
fair and reasonable. As to the third part of the Duren test, the
3Thedistrict court found that 153 potential jurors reported, although the parties
use the number 157 in their briefs.
4Two of them had self-identified as both African-American and Caucasian. The
NAACP notes the 2017 census data reflect an additional 2.1% of the population as being
of “two or more races.”
8
Court found that there was insufficient evidence that there
was systematic exclusion of African-Americans in the jury
selection process.
Jury selection then took place.
The initial voir dire panel of thirty-four potential jurors included
three African-Americans. One had a prior felony conviction in Iowa, was
still on parole, and had been prosecuted by the State’s lead prosecutor.
He was excused for cause. See Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.18(5)(a) (allowing a
challenge for cause based on “[a] previous conviction of the juror of a
felony”). A second potential juror also had a felony conviction, although
from another state. His civil rights had not been restored, and he was
excused for cause. See id.
The final African-American potential juror was S.H. The State’s lead
attorney had prosecuted S.H.’s father in a prior case resulting in three
class A felony convictions. During voir dire, S.H. acknowledged that she
had attended part of the trial. The State exercised a peremptory challenge
on her. Although the defense lodged a Batson challenge to the strike, the
district court overruled the challenge finding that the State had offered “a
sufficient nondiscriminatory reason for striking that juror.”
Following four days of presentation of evidence, a jury found Veal
guilty on all charges. On September 12, Veal was sentenced to consecutive
sentences of life without parole on the first-degree murder charges and
twenty-five years on the attempted murder charge. See Iowa Code § 901.5;
id. § 902.1, .3, .9. Veal appealed, and we retained the appeal.
III. Standard of Review.
We review constitutional questions de novo. State v. Plain, 898
N.W.2d 801, 810 (Iowa 2017). This includes claims of systematic exclusion
of a distinctive group from the jury pool in violation of the Sixth
Amendment. Id. at 810, 821–29. It also includes Batson challenges. See
9
State v. Mootz, 808 N.W.2d 207, 214, 215–20 (Iowa 2012). Yet, we give “a
great deal of deference to the district court’s evaluation of credibility when
determining the true motives of the attorney when making strikes.” Id. at
214; see also State v. Griffin, 564 N.W.2d 370, 375–76 (Iowa 1997).
We likewise review de novo a district court’s decision whether a
defendant is competent to stand trial. See State v. Lyman, 776 N.W.2d
865, 873 (Iowa 2010), overruled on other grounds by Alcala v. Marriott Int’l
Inc., 880 N.W.2d 669, 708 & n.3 (Iowa 2016).
In the speedy trial area, “[w]e review a district court’s determination
whether the State carried its burden to show good cause for the delay for
abuse of discretion.” State v. McNeal, 897 N.W.2d 697, 703 (Iowa 2017).
Also, “[w]e review a district court’s decision on claims of prosecutorial
misconduct for abuse of discretion, which occurs when ‘a court acts on
grounds clearly untenable or to an extent clearly unreasonable.’ ” State v.
Coleman, 907 N.W.2d 124, 134 (Iowa 2018) (quoting State v. Krogmann,
804 N.W.2d 518, 523 (Iowa 2011)). We review rulings on demonstrative
evidence for an abuse of discretion. See McNeal, 897 N.W.2d at 703. We
also review evidentiary rulings regarding the admission or exclusion of
prior bad acts for abuse of discretion. State v. Putman, 848 N.W.2d 1, 7
(Iowa 2014).
We review challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence for correction
of errors at law. State v. Sanford, 814 N.W.2d 611, 615 (Iowa 2012). We
review a denial of new trial on the ground the verdict is contrary to the
weight of the evidence for abuse of discretion. State v. Ary, 877 N.W.2d
686, 706 (Iowa 2016).
IV. Fair-Cross-Section Claim.
Veal maintains that the jury selection process used in Webster
County violated the Sixth Amendment requirement that juries be drawn
10
so as to represent a fair cross section of the community. 5 We addressed a
similar claim today in Lilly, ___ N.W.2d ___. In Lilly, the defendant raised
both the Sixth Amendment and article I, section 10. Id. at ___. We applied
the Duren/Plain framework to these issues. Id.; see also Duren, 439 U.S.
at 364, 99 S. Ct. at 668; Plain, 898 N.W.2d at 822. We held that under
article I, section 10, a defendant establishes the underrepresentation
prong of the Duren/Plain framework by showing that the representation of
a distinctive group in the jury pool falls below the representation in the
eligible juror population by more than one standard deviation. Lilly, ___
N.W.2d at ___. We held that the representation of the group in the eligible
juror population should be assessed using the most current census data,
adjusted for any reliable data that might affect eligibility, such as the
numbers of persons under the age of eighteen. Id. at ___. 6 Lilly also held
that aggregated data on multiple jury pools could be used, so long as the
data were not selective. Id. at ___. Additionally, Lilly held that a defendant
whose jury pool contains at least as high a percentage of the distinctive
group as the eligible population has not been aggrieved under the
Duren/Plain framework. Id. at ___.
Turning to the systematic-exclusion prong of Duren/Plain, we
reiterated in Lilly that the defendant must prove “causation,” that is, that
5On appeal, Veal also raises article I, section 10 of the Iowa Constitution, although
he does not offer a separate state constitutional analysis. However, in the proceedings
below, Veal cited only the Sixth Amendment, not article I, section 10. Likewise, the
district court mentioned only the Sixth Amendment in its ruling. By contrast, Veal did
mention the Iowa Constitution when asserting his Batson challenge and when moving for
change of venue. We have held that a defendant who specifically identifies only a federal
constitutional claim in the trial court has not preserved a state constitutional claim. See
State v. Coleman, 890 N.W.2d 284, 286 (Iowa 2017); State v. Prusha, 874 N.W.2d 627,
630 (Iowa 2016). Veal does not argue ineffective assistance on direct appeal based on
trial counsel’s failure to raise the Iowa Constitution below.
6At oral argument, the parties agreed that another valid adjustment would be to
exclude persons incarcerated in the state prison in Fort Dodge who obviously could not
serve as jurors.
11
the underrepresentation actually resulted from a particular feature or
features of the jury selection system. Id. at ___. However, we held that
“run-of-the-mill jury management practices” can, under appropriate
circumstances, constitute systematic exclusion. Id. at ___.
We believe that Lilly’s holdings are equally valid when a case is
decided under the Sixth Amendment, with two exceptions. We are not
persuaded that one standard deviation would be enough to establish the
underrepresentation prong for federal constitutional purposes. In
Castaneda v. Partida, the United States Supreme Court seemingly
endorsed two to three standard deviations as an appropriate threshold
under the Fourteenth Amendment, and we are not persuaded the Supreme
Court would adopt a more lenient standard under the Sixth Amendment.
430 U.S. 482, 496 n.17, 97 S. Ct. 1272, 1281 n.17 (1977). We believe a
downward variance of two standard deviations must be shown under the
Sixth Amendment.
We also are not persuaded that run-of-the-mill jury management
practices can constitute systematic exclusion under the Sixth
Amendment. In Berghuis v. Smith, the Supreme Court noted,
Smith catalogs a laundry list of factors in addition to the
alleged “siphoning” that, he urges, rank as “systematic”
causes of underrepresentation of African–Americans in Kent
County’s jury pool. Smith’s list includes the County’s practice
of excusing people who merely alleged hardship or simply
failed to show up for jury service, its reliance on mail notices,
its failure to follow up on nonresponses, its use of residential
addresses at least 15 months old, and the refusal of Kent
County police to enforce court orders for the appearance of
prospective jurors.
559 U.S. 314, 332, 130 S. Ct. 1382, 1395 (2010) (citations omitted). The
Court then went on,
This Court . . . has never “clearly established” that jury-
selection-process features of the kind on Smith’s list can give
12
rise to a fair-cross-section claim. . . . [I]n Duren, the Court
understood that hardship exemptions resembling those Smith
assails might well “survive a fair-cross-section challenge.”
Id. at 333, 130 S. Ct. at 1395 (citation omitted) (quoting Duren, 439 U.S.
at 370, 99 S. Ct. at 669).
However, Veal’s pool contained only five African-Americans out of
153 potential jurors. This 3.27% figure is below the percentage of African-
Americans in Webster County (4.6%) and also below the percentage of
eighteen-and-over African-Americans in Webster County (3.9%). 7 Turning
to the aggregate data, they show only thirty-five self-identifying African-
Americans out of 2637 persons who responded to the juror questionnaire
in Webster County in 2016. This is statistically significant even under the
higher Castaneda threshold. The odds of getting only thirty-five successes
out of 2637 trials with p of .046 are 4.05 X 10-21. As the State concedes
in its brief, “The odds of that occurring randomly . . . are very low.” This
remains true even if the overall percentage of African-Americans living in
Webster County is adjusted to account for the fact that a higher percentage
of African-Americans living in Iowa are under eighteen and cannot serve
on juries. See Lilly, ___ N.W.2d at ___. The odds of getting only thirty-five
successes out of 2637 trials with p of .039 in that case are 2.29 X 10-15.
Other adjustments, such as for the Fort Dodge prison population or for
individuals of mixed race, likely would not alter the bottom line revealed
by the aggregate data. 8
7The State proposes an age-related adjustment of .8559, because 77.7% of all
Iowans are eighteen and over (and thus eligible to serve on juries) but only 66.5% of Iowan
African-Americans are eighteen and over. Doing the math, 66.5 divided by 77.7 is .8559.
8However, it is possible that an adjustment for the Fort Dodge prison population
would bring the percentage of jury-eligible African-Americans in the overall jury-eligible
population below 3.27%, i.e., below the actual percentage of African-Americans in Veal’s
juror pool. If so, for reasons we discuss in Lilly, Veal would not be able to meet the
underrepresentation prong of the Duren/Plain framework, and there would be no need to
examine aggregate data. See Lilly, __ N.W.2d at __. This is a matter on which the parties
can present proof on remand. We do not have an adequate record before us.
13
Yet we note that Veal’s counsel aggregated data from jury
questionnaires for 2016 only. Veal’s trial actually took place in July 2017.
The record does not indicate whether similar data were available for the
first half of 2017. We cautioned in Lilly that aggregate data cannot be
gathered selectively. See id. at __. Thus, if data were readily available for
the first half of 2017, it would be inappropriate to exclude them.
Veal did not attempt to meet the third prong of Duren/Plain other
than by arguing that systematic exclusion can be inferred from the 2016
aggregated data. As we explained in Lilly, that is not enough. Id. at ___.
The defendant must identify some practice or combination of practices
that led to the underrepresentation, and it must be something other than
the “laundry list” the Supreme Court declined to condemn in Berghuis.
See 559 U.S. at 332, 130 S. Ct. at 1395.
As in Plain and Lilly, we believe the appropriate course of action here
would be to remand the case. Neither the parties nor the district court
had the benefit of today’s decisions. A remand will offer Veal a further
opportunity to develop his arguments that his Sixth Amendment right to
an impartial jury was violated. If the district court concludes a violation
occurred, it shall grant Veal a new trial.
V. Speedy Trial Claim.
Veal next argues his rule 2.33 right to a speedy trial was violated.
See Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.33(2)(b). Veal’s argument centers on a one-day
delay that occurred from July 10, 2017, to July 11, 2017, while the parties
litigated the fair-cross-section claim.
We begin by reviewing the relevant dates. The trial information was
filed November 23, 2016. Trial was originally scheduled for January 24,
2017. Veal never waived speedy trial.
14
On December 30, 2016, Veal applied for a psychiatric evaluation of
himself at state expense. On January 4, the court suspended proceedings
and ordered such an evaluation. The evaluation was filed on February 28.
The evaluator recommended that Veal be referred to the forensic
psychiatric hospital for restoration of competency. On March 3, the court
approved the referral and continued the suspension of proceedings. On
May 15, the reports of two professionals were filed concluding Veal was
now competent to stand trial. On May 23, the court found that Veal’s
competency had been restored and vacated the suspension of proceedings.
The court reset trial for June 26.
Veal’s counsel shortly thereafter moved to continue trial from June
26 to July 10 based on counsel’s unavailability. The State did not oppose
this request, and the court granted it. Everyone agreed that July 10 was
the last available date within the ninety-day speedy trial window, taking
into account the date the trial information was filed and excluding the time
spent addressing Veal’s competency.
On the morning of July 10, the court convened proceedings
intending to begin the trial. Veal’s counsel observed there were no
minorities and sought until the afternoon to explore racial disparity and
systematic exclusion in the jury venire. Further discussions occurred later
that morning and Veal’s counsel asked for additional time past the 10th
to investigate systematic exclusion. The State resisted the request. It
noted that Veal had been in possession of the list of potential jurors earlier
and could have raised the fair-cross-section claim before the day of trial.
The State also asked the court to find good cause for extending the ninety-
day deadline if it granted more time.
15
The court decided to give Veal’s counsel until the following day, i.e.,
the 11th, to conduct research and discovery on the fair-cross-section
claim. On the question of speedy trial, the court ruled,
THE COURT: To grant the motion to -- to allow time to
do discovery and make a further record regarding whether an
under-representation is due to the systematic exclusion of a
group in the jury selection process necessarily requires trial
to begin after the 90 days. I think there has to be a conscious
choice of that or at least be aware of that.
So given those situations, that they’re really in conflict,
counsel for the defendant, I just want to, you know,
understand for the record, knowing that you’re at the 90th
day, you are asking for additional time to do further discovery
or present further arguments on this matter to extend -- and
that would extend this case past 90 days. Is that your
position? MR. KLOBERDANZ: Yes, Your Honor.
THE COURT: All right. And you’ve discussed that with
your client also? MR. KLOBERDANZ: Yes, Your Honor, we
have.
THE COURT: All right. Based upon that record, I will
agree to give defense counsel additional time. I find, however,
that there is good cause shown for extending the time to
present this case for trial:
As Mr. Brown has said about four times, the State is
ready to proceed here today. The jury panel was here. We
were ready to begin the case. The jury panel is coming back
at 1:00, so we could continue the case yet today;
That the circumstances where Defendant’s motion was
first raised on Friday of last week [July 7], frankly, without
any time for any of us to do anything about it, and then raised
today, makes the situation where it would have been
impossible to deal with this matter before the conclusion of
the 90 days;
That this is the defendant’s motion with full knowledge
that this would require trial to begin after 90 days.
And in light of that, the defendant has chosen to seek
the additional time to exercise his rights under the Plain case
to do some further discovery; and, therefore, I think that the
-- any delay in the case would -- would be attributable to the
defendant and there’d be good cause for -- for not getting this
case tried within 90 days.
16
The next day, July 11, a second pool of potential jurors had been
summoned to add to the first pool. Veal, meanwhile, provided additional
data based on jury pools in Webster County for all of 2016 and formally
moved that his jury venire be stricken as not reflecting a fair cross section
of the community. In addition, Veal moved for dismissal of the case based
on violation of his speedy trial rights, reasoning that it was the State’s duty
to provide a jury panel representing a cross section of community within
the ninety-day deadline. The court denied both motions, reiterating on the
speedy trial issue that “there was good cause to go past the 90 days.” At
this point, the parties proceeded with jury selection.
Iowa Rule of Criminal Procedure 2.33(2)(b) provides,
If a defendant indicted for a public offense has not waived the
defendant’s right to a speedy trial the defendant must be
brought to trial within 90 days after indictment is found or the
court must order the indictment to be dismissed unless good
cause to the contrary be shown.
The good cause determination focuses on “the reason for the delay.”
McNeal, 897 N.W.2d at 704 (quoting State v. Winters, 690 N.W.2d 903, 908
(Iowa 2005)). Yet we also consider “surrounding circumstances such as
the length of the delay, whether the defendant asserted his right to a
speedy trial, and whether prejudice resulted from the delay.” Id. Here the
delay was only one day, it was precipitated by the defendant’s request for
more time to investigate and present evidence on the fair-cross-section
issue, and the defendant cites no prejudice that resulted from this single-
day postponement. In our view, the district court carefully balanced a
number of concerns. “[P]utting ourselves in the shoes of the district
judge,” we find no abuse of discretion. See id. at 708.
Veal denies there was good cause for any delay. Treating the judicial
branch and the county attorney’s office collectively as “the State,” Veal
17
maintains it was the State’s obligation not just to be ready to try the case
on July 10, but also to have a jury pool meeting constitutional standards
available that day. Thus, Veal’s argument would effectively transform any
fair-cross-section violation not remedied before the ninety-day deadline
into a speedy trial violation.
Veal cites no authority for his effort to conflate substantive legal
claims with speedy trial violations. We are not persuaded. By Veal’s logic,
any time we find on appeal that a defendant is entitled to a new trial, we
should also find that “the State” violated the defendant’s speedy trial rights
by committing a legal error that resulted in a new trial beyond the ninety-
day deadline. This would go too far.
VI. Batson Challenge.
Veal contends the district court erred in overruling his Batson
challenge to the State’s exercise of a peremptory strike on an African-
American prospective juror. Batson holds that a defendant may establish
a prima facie case of racial discrimination by showing that the prosecutor
has exercised one or more peremptory challenges to remove from the
venire members of a racial minority and that these facts and other relevant
circumstances raise an inference of discrimination. See Batson v.
Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 96–98, 106 S. Ct. 1712, 1723–24 (1986). Such a
showing shifts the burden to the prosecution to come forward with a race-
neutral explanation for exercising the challenges. Id.
During voir dire of this juror, the lead prosecutor recognized her as
the daughter of a person he had prosecuted successfully for three class
“A” felonies. The juror had attended two days of her father’s trial. The
juror stated during voir dire that she believed her father was treated fairly.
She conceded he was “involved” in the crimes but said she did not “know
for sure if he was the only person.”
18
The State exercised one of its peremptory strikes on this juror.
Veal’s counsel objected on the basis of Batson and the prosecutor provided
the following explanation:
So I’ll tell you why we struck Ms. [H.]. Ms. [H.] is the
daughter of [S. H.]. I prosecuted [S. H.] for three class A
felonies in this county; kidnapping, sexual abuse, and
murder, all in the first degree. It was a very high-profile case,
a very brutal killing . . . .
At the time of the -- the crime -- I can’t tell you the year
or the date. I do lose dates -- but Ms. [H.], I believe, was right
around the age of 17 years old. I vaguely remember her being
present at least at part of the -- if it wasn’t the trial, it would
have been part of the pretrial proceedings. She was with her
mother . . . .
....
I mean, I can’t keep a juror on whose father I prosecuted
for a class A felony. I mean, there -- there -- she may have
latent hostility towards me personally because of what I did.
Her expressions that she made on the -- on the record, she
said that his sentence was fair. She doesn’t appear to have a
whole lot of contact with him; but that’s not a risk I can take,
particularly under the circumstances of this case.
We have -- The allegation is that Mr. Veal killed two
people. At least based in part on what our expert has said, he
may be blaming a -- a second person, may be blaming Ron
Willis, claiming that he didn’t -- that Mr. Veal’s claiming that
he didn’t do the crime that he’s accused of.
And Ms. [H.] raised that issue with me concerning the
fairness and what she thought about the trial of her father,
[S. H.], whenever she said somebody else might have been
involved.
I can tell you right now, in the [S. H.] case, no one else
was involved. We had strong physical evidence against him
that he was the sole perpetrator of those three crimes. That’s
what concerns me about Ms. [H.]. I think those are race-
neutral reasons to strike her.
If she were white, I would make the exact same
objection to having her -- or make the same exact strike that
I would. And it -- this has nothing to do with her race; it has
everything to do with her background and who her father is
and the fact that I was directly involved in that case and that
19
prosecution. So for those reasons, that’s why we exercised
our preemptory challenge.
One other thing I would tell you is we did wait to the
end to strike her with No. 10 because I thought the defense
might actually challenge her for the same reason; that she
had, you know, had this -- this connection to a previous high-
profile violent crime here in the county. I could see actually
how that they could maybe justify a preemptory strike on that
basis, as well. I thought that would alleviate this problem of
having to articulate why we’re doing it; but apparently that
didn’t happen, so that’s why we took her with No. 10.
Just don’t want you to read anything else into that.
That’s why we waited till the end. So those are our reasons,
and we would ask that our strike be upheld.
Defense counsel did not question the State’s motive for striking this
juror, but argued that her voir dire responses gave no indication of bias.
Because this juror was the last available African-American juror, defense
counsel “ask[ed] the Court to hold the State to a very high standard given
the circumstances here.”
The district court overruled Veal’s Batson challenge, stating,
Prosecution of a potential juror’s father in a -- in an apparently
class A case by the same attorney as is in this case, I think, is
a sufficient nondiscriminatory reason for striking that juror;
and that’s why I’m going to overrule your objection.
Here and below, Veal insists that a nondiscriminatory reason for
striking the last African-American juror is insufficient and that we should
adopt something like a cause requirement in those circumstances. This
is contrary to our precedent. In Griffin, we upheld a prosecutor’s use of
strikes on the only two African-American members of the panel. 564
N.W.2d at 375–76. We noted that the prosecutor’s explanation “need not
rise to the level justifying exercise of a challenge for cause” but must be
race-neutral and “related to the particular case to be tried.” Id. at 375
(quoting Batson, 476 U.S. at 97–98, 106 S. Ct. at 1723–24). We affirmed
the district court’s acceptance of the prosecutor’s explanation that both
20
jurors had previously sat on a jury that convicted the defendant of lesser
included offenses in a willful injury case. Id. at 376. We stated that
“[t]hese qualify as racially-neutral reasons” and “[t]here is nothing to
suggest they were a mere pretext.” Id. The same observations can be made
here; indeed, to an outsider, the prosecutor’s reason for striking juror H.
here seems more substantial than the reasons given in Griffin.
More recently, in Mootz, we said that a Batson challenge should not
prevail “merely because the judge does not find the reason given to be
persuasive.” 808 N.W.2d at 218. Rather, “[t]he reason given must, in and
of itself, violate equal protection.” Id.
Veal argues that allowing prosecutors to use peremptory strikes on
prospective jurors who are relatives of individuals they previously
prosecuted “disproportionately implicates African-American potential
jurors.” We are aware of the disproportionate impact when jurors can be
removed based on prior interactions with law enforcement. But see id. at
219 (“Our cases have repeatedly noted that a juror’s interactions with law
enforcement and the legal system are a valid, race-neutral reason for a
peremptory challenge.”). But this case involved a special set of
circumstances—a prosecutor’s use of a peremptory strike on a juror
because the same prosecutor had sent her father to prison for the rest of
his life. We affirm the district court’s ruling that this was a valid, race-
neutral reason for rejecting the Batson challenge.
VII. Prosecutorial Error or Misconduct.
Veal contends that the prosecutor was guilty of misconduct in
several instances, requiring reversal of his convictions and a new trial. We
have drawn a distinction between prosecutorial misconduct and
prosecutorial error. State v. Schlitter, 881 N.W.2d 380, 392–94 (Iowa
2016). The former requires an intentional violation of a clear legal or
21
professional standard; the latter involves a mistake or an exercise of “poor
judgment.” Id. at 394 (quoting Shawn E. Minihan, Measuring Prosecutorial
Actions: An Analysis of Misconduct Versus Error, Prosecutor, Dec. 2014, at
25). We will treat Veal’s claim as one of prosecutorial misconduct or error.
Veal first takes issue with the following exchange during voir dire:
MR. BROWN: . . . Ms. [M.], I’ll come back to you. I’ve
mentioned multiple times here that this is a murder case and
an attempted murder; right? Okay. And I think with Ms. [P.],
she talked about a case that she was on that dealt with a --
serving a minor; correct? Okay. So obviously when you
compare the two, that’s, you know, certainly minor compared
to -- to a murder. Would you agree? MS. [M.]: Yes.
MR. BROWN: Okay. So looking at comparing those two,
would you say that we would have to have more evidence in a
murder case than we would in someone who sells alcohol to a
minor? MS. [M.]: Yes.
MR. BROWN: Okay. I get that answer a lot too. Do you
realize that the burden in those two cases is exactly the same,
the definition would be the same? Do you follow me? MS.
[M.]: Uh-huh.
MR. BROWN: So it’d be beyond a reasonable doubt as
it’s defined by the judge here. The same instruction would be
given in the case like what Ms. [P.] had talked about. So the
burden is the same in the sense that it’s defined the same. Do
you follow me? MS. [M.]: Yes.
MR. BROWN: Okay. So would you hold us to the
burden as the Judge gives it to you -- MS. [M.]: Yes.
MR. BROWN: -- and not think that we have to have
something more than that? MS. [M.]: Correct.
Veal’s counsel shortly thereafter moved for a mistrial based on this
exchange. He said, “I don’t know if that went over the line but want to
bring it to the court’s attention. . . . It was a comparison of selling alcohol
to minors and -- and murder . . . .” He then added that when a prosecutor
compares two crimes it is “at least arguably a comment on potential
punishment; and certainly that’s not appropriate or proper.”
22
The court denied the motion for mistrial. It recalled the reference as
an effort to equate the burden of proof for both crimes. It did say that the
comment could be viewed as one on possible punishment, and counsel
should “avoid that sort of discussion in the future.”
We find no abuse of discretion in the denial of a mistrial. Jurors
didn’t fall off the turnip truck and into the courtroom. Inevitably, a
prospective juror is going to regard murder as a more serious crime than
selling alcohol to minors and assume it has a more severe punishment.
The point of the prosecutor’s voir dire questioning was not to comment on
punishment but to make sure jurors would be willing to accept the
proposition that all criminal cases are subject to the same “beyond a
reasonable doubt” burden of proof. That was a legitimate purpose.
On appeal, Veal argues that the prosecutor’s contrast between
murder and selling alcohol to minors “[p]lanted in the jurors’ mind the
anchor of a minor punishment . . . .” This seems unlikely to us. No one
referred to the actual punishment for either crime.
Veal also complains that during trial, one of the prosecutors
incorrectly told the jury that the defense had seen a particular diagram
before. The defense immediately disputed that statement in front of the
jury. The diagram was not admitted at that time. During the next break,
outside the presence of the jury, it was established that both sides were
partly right: the diagram had been provided to defense counsel, but some
additions had been made. Over objection, the court received the diagram
into evidence and rejected any argument that the changes to the diagram
had prejudiced the defense.
Notably, defense counsel did not then assert prosecutorial
misconduct or error. Defense counsel did not seek any relief from the
prosecutor’s previous statement about the diagram, such as a curative
23
instruction. And on appeal, defense counsel is not even appealing the
decision to admit the diagram. We find no reversible error.
Veal also complains about comments made by the lead prosecutor
during his rebuttal closing argument. Over objection, the prosecutor
engaged in some sharp criticism of defense counsel’s closing argument.
These included analogizing the defense argument to the times when the
prosecutor’s daughter would say, “Really, Dad? Really?” to her father
without having any “substance.” The prosecutor also argued as follows:
Mr. Kloberdanz characterized this as a horrible tragedy.
Well, I would disagree with this. You know what a horrible
tragedy is? When an infant dies in its crib for no reason.
When a father of three, driving home from work, his car slides
off the highway and is killed in a crash for no reason.
This is not a horrible tragedy, this is a cold-blooded
killing. It is a brutal, senseless murder and a near-miss on
Ron Willis. That’s the proper way to characterize what
occurred.
At the end of Mr. Kloberdanz’s statement -- at his
closing argument to you, he told quite a story. Wow. What
was all of that based on? Nothing. What -- You would have
thought Mr. Kloberdanz was there, the way he told that story.
That Ron Willis got hit in the head with the lamp, that
he switched clothes with Peter Veal, that he did all those
things. Holy cow. Wow.
The district court overruled defense counsel’s objections to this line
of argument but told the prosecutor he “may be pushing” the line of what
is proper. At that point, the prosecutor shifted into a detailed discussion
of the evidence.
We have indicated that a prosecutor may attack the defense’s
“theory of the case” so long as he or she does not make “denigrating or
inflammatory comments of a personal nature aimed at defense counsel.”
Coleman, 907 N.W.2d at 140. In Coleman, we found no violation of the
defendant’s right to a fair trial when the prosecutor commented that “the
24
defense, they want to—to blow a lot of smoke around the law, make it as
fuzzy as possible” and “the defense will hide behind [a] cloud of
assumption.” Id. at 139–41 (alteration in original).
Here the prosecutor’s comments may have veered improperly into
personal attacks on defense counsel, e.g., “You would have thought
Mr. Kloberdanz was there, the way he told that story.” Having said that,
we do not find that the comments resulted in prejudice that denied Veal a
fair trial. See id. at 140. As the district court noted in denying the motion
for new trial, “[T]he evidence against [Veal] was strong.” Veal’s theory of
defense was implausible. 9
VIII. Firearm Demonstration.
During trial, the State’s firearms expert Victor Murillo used a .380
semiautomatic pistol from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation’s
(DCI) reference collection for demonstrative purposes. This was done
because the actual murder weapon had carcinogenic dye on it. The
demonstration weapon was the same make and model as the murder
weapon, although with some design changes.
Murillo testified that the murder weapon had jammed after it was
used to kill Kavars because a faulty cartridge became stuck inside of the
chamber. To help illustrate his testimony, the State asked Murillo to
9In closing argument, Veal’s counsel advanced the theory that Willis was actually
the murderer of both Kavars and Christensen. According to defense counsel, Willis sent
Veal outside Christensen’s house wearing Willis’s clothing and carrying the knife used to
murder Christensen so Veal could be a “fall guy.” According to this theory, Willis
managed to clean himself up to eliminate all traces of blood on his body and his
whereabouts before calling 911 to contact police.
In addition to its overall implausibility, this theory fails to explain why the bloody
footprints in the house matched Veal’s shoes, how Veal ended up with a cut on his hand,
why Veal ran away from the police whereas Willis cooperated, and how Willis’s skin tissue
ended up on the slide of the gun.
25
display the operation of a semiautomatic .380 using the sample weapon
from DCI’s lab.
At trial and on appeal, Veal claims the demonstration should not
have been permitted because the demonstration weapon differed from the
murder weapon in certain respects. However, we find no abuse of
discretion. See State v. Liggins, 524 N.W.2d 181, 189 (Iowa 1994) (noting
the court’s “broad discretion in permitting demonstrative evidence to
explain or illustrate the testimony of witnesses”). The demonstration
weapon was not admitted into evidence and it was made clear that it was
not the original. See McNeal, 897 N.W.2d at 709 (“It was made clear to the
jury that the replica [sledgehammer] was not the original. The replica was
not admitted into evidence.”). Veal’s counsel was able to make any
differences clear when he cross-examined Murillo.
Veal urges that the demonstration had little relevance, because
“there was no dispute over how the gun operated” and “[t]he dispute was
over who fired the gun . . . .” To the extent that is true, though, it would
also mean that the demonstration had little potential for resulting in unfair
prejudice.
IX. The Defendant’s Competency Hearing.
On May 15, 2017, two examining professionals reported that Veal
was properly oriented as to time, place, and current events and could
perform mental tracking tasks and a memory test without difficulty.
According to the reports, Veal also was able to list the charges against him
and identify the range of potential sentences; he could confirm that he had
met with his defense attorney five or six times and that he was able to
work with him; he understood the roles of his defense attorney, the
prosecutor, the judge, and the jury; he understood what a plea bargain
would entail; and he realized that he should advise his defense attorney if
26
a witness wasn’t telling the truth. Veal’s scores on tests of basic legal
concepts and skills to assist defense were described as “somewhat higher
than average compared to the general population.”
These evaluations concluded that Veal had a factual and a rational
understanding of the legal proceedings and could assist his defense
counsel. Thus, they opined he was competent to stand trial. See Iowa
Code § 812.3(2); id. § 812.5 (defining the issue as whether “the defendant
is suffering from a mental disorder which prevents the defendant from
appreciating the charge, understanding the proceedings, or assisting
effectively in the defense”).
Following the receipt of both evaluations, a competency hearing took
place on May 23. The evaluations were admitted into evidence. For the
defense, Veal’s mother testified that she had visited her son twice recently
for brief periods of time. The first time, Veal was rocking and looking
behind him. His mother got “the feeling he was paranoid.” The second
time, Veal did not behave like that. However, during this second visit, Veal
asked Veal’s mother about how his sister was doing just a few minutes
after Veal’s mother had already spoken to Veal about his sister.
Defense counsel also represented that in their encounters with their
client, Veal had not asked questions of his own and often had not
responded to their inquiries. Defense counsel urged that there was a
serious question whether Veal was listening to his attorneys—rather than
listening to voices—and that Veal was having a hard time paying attention.
After considering the evidence, the district court concluded that Veal
was competent to stand trial. On our de novo review, we agree. The two
expert evaluations on which the district court relied were detailed and
thorough. As the district court observed, the testimony of Veal’s mother
was based on only two fifteen-minute visits with her son. Even accepting
27
the professional statement of Veal’s counsel that they were having trouble
interacting with their client, the examining psychiatrist and the examining
psychologist covered this same subject in considerable detail in their
evaluations. Based on their objective testing and personal observations,
they found Veal would be able to work with his counsel.
In sum, the State carried its burden of proving by a preponderance
of evidence that Veal’s competency had been restored. See id. § 812.8(5).
Notably, Veal cites nothing from the trial itself that might have suggested
he was not competent to stand trial. Cf. State v. Einfeldt, 914 N.W.2d 773,
776–77 (Iowa 2018) (discussing behavior and statements of the defendant
during trial). 10
X. Excluded Evidence.
Veal challenges the district court’s exclusion of evidence pertaining
to Willis. The limited evidence essentially fell into two categories:
(1) Willis’s criminal history and (2) information that a defense witness,
M.B., had concerning Willis.
A. Willis’s Criminal History. We begin with the admitted
evidence. The defense was allowed to impeach Willis with the fact that he
had been convicted in 2009 on a felony drug charge. The defense was also
allowed to argue that Willis had been found by the police to have a small
amount of marijuana in his car on November 17, 2016, and was not
10Veal frames the issue on appeal as whether a “new” competency evaluation
should have been ordered. In the trial court, Veal’s position was that additional
evaluation was needed to determine whether Veal was suffering from schizophrenia or
not. Regardless of how the issue is characterized, the role of the trial court as of May 23
was to determine Veal’s competency to stand trial in light of the expert evaluations and
other evidence before it. See Iowa Code §§ 812.5, .8(5).
28
prosecuted. Similarly, the defense was able to argue that Willis had not
been prosecuted as a felon in possession of a firearm. 11
However, the defense was not allowed to bring out Willis’s drug
charges in Minnesota that were pending at the time of trial. Likewise,
evidence of Willis’s early June 2017 misdemeanor drug possession
conviction was excluded. Also excluded was the fact that Willis did not
serve the mandatory minimum two days in jail on the June 2017
conviction and the possibility that the charge could have been (but was
not) enhanced to a felony. The court reasoned that misdemeanors and
unproved charges are not normally admissible, and there was no basis for
concluding that Willis was the beneficiary of some kind of deal to receive
favorable treatment.
We see no abuse of discretion here. Allowing the defense to present
this additional evidence of Willis’s criminal history could have led to an
unneeded and time-consuming sideshow. Willis made a 911 call to police
voluntarily on November 17, 2016, to report that Veal had shot Kavars.
Willis’s version of events never changed. While defense counsel should
have broad leeway to question prosecution witnesses facing criminal
exposure, this record contains no suggestion that any sort of deal was
made with Willis. There would have been no need for a deal: Willis had
reported the criminal episode of his own volition. Moreover, Veal’s defense
theory was that Willis had shot Kavars and stabbed Christensen to death.
If that were true, Willis had plenty of motive to pin the crimes on Veal and
did not need a “deal” as motivation.
B. M.B.’s Testimony. Again, we begin with the admitted evidence.
M.B. was Christensen’s live-in girlfriend during the last few months before
11Willis
consented to a search of his vehicle, a point the prosecution used at trial
to show that Willis was not trying to hide anything from the police.
29
his death. She testified that she witnessed Willis delivering drugs to
Christensen. She testified that Christensen was spending a lot of money
on drugs and his financial situation was deteriorating. She also testified
that about two weeks before November 17, 2016, Willis had date-raped her
and she reported this to Christensen. M.B. further testified that
Christensen was upset and mad at Willis upon hearing this. And M.B.
testified that Willis kept drugs and a handgun in his car.
M.B. was not allowed to testify that Christensen had “a significant
drug problem,” how much Christensen was spending on drugs, or that she
was “scared of” Willis.
Veal claims that these limits on M.B.’s testimony significantly
interfered with his ability to present his case. In particular, Veal contends
that the jury got to hear of a “rift” between Willis and Christensen but did
not get to hear “what the rift was about.” We disagree. Veal was able to
demonstrate that Willis had a motive to kill Kavars and Christensen. We
find no abuse of discretion.
XI. Sufficiency of the Evidence.
Veal argues the district court should have granted his motion for
judgment of acquittal on the ground there was insufficient evidence to
support his convictions for the first-degree murder of Christensen and
Kavars and for the attempted murder of Willis. Alternatively, Veal urges
that his motion for new trial should have been granted on the ground that
the verdicts were against the weight of the evidence. We disagree with
both contentions.
Willis testified that Veal shot Kavars in the throat before turning the
gun on Willis and attempting to shoot Willis. When the pistol jammed,
according to Willis, Veal struck Willis in the head and then attempted to
free the lodged round. The pistol recovered at the scene by police had a
30
jammed round in the firing chamber. Willis’s skin tissue was also found
on the pistol’s slide consistent with his being struck on the head with it.
After Willis fled the scene, Veal was the only person remaining in the
house with Christensen. Christensen’s dead body was later found in a
pool of blood with twenty-five stab wounds. Christensen’s blood was all
over Veal’s jeans and shoes. The bloody footprints in the house matched
Veal’s shoes. A trail of Christensen’s blood followed Veal’s path out of the
house. Along the path were Veal’s discarded bloody shirt and bloody knife.
Again, Christensen’s blood was on these items.
Veal’s improbable defense theory was that Willis had both shot
Kavars and stabbed Christensen, then forced Veal to put on Willis’s bloody
clothes, then cleaned himself up so he would have no trace of
Christensen’s blood, and then left the house and called 911. The jury was
entitled to reject this theory which was not supported by the weight of the
evidence.
XII. Conclusion.
For the foregoing reasons, we conditionally affirm Veal’s conviction
and sentence, but remand this case for further consideration of Veal’s
claim that his jury was not drawn from a fair cross section of the
community in violation of the Sixth Amendment.
AFFIRMED ON CONDITION AND REMANDED WITH
DIRECTIONS.
Cady, C.J., concurs.
Wiggins and Appel, JJ., concur as to divisions IV, V, VII, VIII, IX, X,
and XI, and dissent as to division VI.
Waterman, Christensen, and McDonald, JJ., concur as to divisions
V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, and XI, and dissent as to division IV.
31
#17–1453, State v. Veal
CADY, Chief Justice (concurring specially).
I join in each division of the majority opinion by Justice Mansfield.
In particular, I agree that the district court in this case properly applied
the Batson test to reject the challenge to the removal of the last African-
American juror from the panel. See Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 96,
106 S. Ct. 1712, 1723 (1986). In other words, the district court properly
applied our current law.
Nevertheless, I acknowledge problems inherent in the exercise of
peremptory challenges and agree with the separate opinion by Justice
Wiggins that the solution in the future is to do away with the use of
peremptory challenges. Thus, I am not in favor of trying to modify our
governing rules to better detect bias in discretionary decision-making so
much as I am in eliminating discretionary practices altogether that allow
implicit bias to exist undetected. For that reason, I also concur in the
overall theme of the thoughtful analysis and criticism of peremptory
challenges discussed in the separate opinion by Justice Appel.
32
#17–1453, State v. Veal
WIGGINS, Justice (concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I join Justice Appel’s opinion in this case. However, I think it is time
to abolish peremptory challenges in Iowa. The Code and our rules provide
for reasons why a court should not seat a juror. Iowa Code §§ 607A.4, .5,
.6 (2019); Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.18(5); accord Iowa R. Civ. P. 1.915(6). And,
if the rules are inadequate, we should amend our rules. If a person can
sit as a juror under the Code and rules, a party should not be able to strike
that otherwise qualified juror.
As Justice Marshall pointed out in his concurring opinion in Batson
v. Kentucky, “[m]isuse of the peremptory challenge to exclude black jurors
has become both common and flagrant.” 476 U.S. 79, 103, 106 S. Ct.
1712, 1726 (1986) (Marshall, J., concurring). Even after Batson, I see the
same problem in Iowa. In the majority of the cases, the reasons given by
prosecutors in response to a Batson challenge appear to be pretexual.
Washington General Rule 37, cited by Justice Appel in his opinion, helps
but does not solve the problem. The only way to stop the misuse of
peremptory challenges is to abolish them in Iowa and require judges to
enforce rigorously challenges for cause. If our judges would enforce our
rules on challenges for cause, the district court can be confident that it sat
an impartial jury.
The practice of allowing peremptory challenges started in England
in the 1300s. Raymond J. Broderick, Why the Peremptory Challenge
Should Be Abolished, 65 Temp. L. Rev. 369, 371–72 (1992). In 1988,
Parliament abolished peremptory challenges altogether. Id. at 373.
Parliament’s concern was “that defense lawyers were manipulating the
peremptory challenge to pack juries with biased individuals, thereby
defeating the ability of random draw techniques to ensure a representative
33
petit jury.” Id. When prosecutors systematically remove minorities from
juries, we should do what Parliament did and abolish peremptory
challenges.
Peremptory challenges are a creature of our rules and are not
constitutionally required. All that is required under our Constitutions is
that a defendant receives a trial by an impartial jury. U.S. Const. amend.
VI; Iowa Const. art. I, sec. 10. Abolishing peremptory challenges will go a
long way toward fulfilling that constitutional obligation.
Therefore, I think we should begin a discussion to remove
peremptory challenges from our rules.
34
#17–1453, State v. Veal
APPEL, Justice (concurring in part and dissenting in part).
In this case, I concur with the majority opinion except for division
VI (the Batson challenge).
Today, we consider three important cases related to this court’s
ongoing efforts to ensure that the notion of equality before the law applies
to African-Americans in our justice system and in our jury system. As
professional hair splitters, it is easy for us to dive directly into the
intricacies of the cases, disappear, and resurface with narrowly diced
results in each case.
Before doing so, however, I think we should put these cases in a
larger perspective in three ways. First, we should recognize the profound
and persistent problem of racial discrimination in our society. Second, we
should put each of the cases we decide today in their larger context within
our legal system. We should decide these cases only after we have
understood that context. Third, we should recognize the role of state
courts in working to develop a system of justice where fair and impartial
juries and freedom from discrimination are the norm and not the
exception.
I. Contextualizing Civil Rights in Jury Cases.
A. The Persistent, Stubborn, and Ongoing Struggle for Racial
Equality. Achieving the promise of equality before the law for African-
Americans, in Iowa and across the nation, has been a difficult, painful,
and ongoing challenge. The bitter reality of chattel slavery, accommodated
in the United States Constitution and protected in the federal courts, was
dismantled by the American Civil War, motivated at least in part and for
some by the founders’ stirring phase that “all Men are created equal.” The
Declaration of Independence para. 2 (U.S. 1776); Stephen L. Mikochik, A
35
Celebration of Equality, 64 Temple L. Rev. 371, 371 (1991) (“The
Constitution endured slavery until the Civil War . . . .). The war was won
and the victors imposed amendments to the United States Constitution
abolishing slavery. See U.S. Const. amends. XIII, XIV, XV [hereinafter
Reconstruction Amendments].
But the struggle for equality before the law did not end at
Appomattox or after enactment of the postwar constitutional amendments.
It had only begun. After a brief period of hope and some accomplishment,
the reforms of reconstruction, fiercely and violently opposed in the South
and losing political support in the North, were tragically abandoned. See
David Lyons, Corrective Justice, Equal Opportunity, and the Legacy of
Slavery and Jim Crow, 84 B.U. L. Rev. 1375, 1376 (2004). The oppressive
slave regime was replaced by Jim Crow in the states of the former
confederacy and a pattern of less blatant but hurtful discrimination in
other areas of the country. Id. at 1376–77. Although slavery passed from
the scene, persistent and explicit discrimination against African-
Americans remained part of the American landscape for almost a hundred
years. Id.
Iowa has, in some ways, been a leader in efforts to ensure racial
equality. The trilogy of our early civil rights cases have been justly and
widely celebrated. The differences in tone and content between In re Ralph
and the proslavery Dred Scott decision are stark. Compare In re Ralph, 1
Morris 1, 7 (Iowa 1839), with Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 403
(1857), superseded by U.S. Const. amends. XIII, XIV. Leading Iowa
politicians, constitutional convention members, lawyers, and eventually
judges condemned the proslavery declarations of federal courts
culminating in Dred Scott. See State v. Short, 851 N.W.2d 474, 484 (Iowa
2014). When the United States Supreme Court invalidated the Federal
36
Civil Rights Act of 1866 in 1883, the Iowa legislature in its next session
enacted a state civil rights act outlawing, at least to a degree, racial
discrimination in a variety of settings. Russell E. Lovell, Shine on, You
Bright Radical Star: Clark v. Board of School Directors (of Muscatine)—The
Iowa Supreme Court’s Civil Rights Exceptionalism, 67 Drake L. Rev. 175,
195–96 & n.121 (2019) [hereinafter Lovell].
Yet, the early version of the Iowa civil rights legislation was not
routinely enforced by elected county attorneys. Id. at 196 n.121. And,
this court’s decisions were not always encouraging. For instance, in
Brown v. J.H. Bell Co., 146 Iowa 89, 96–97, 123 N.W. 231, 233–34 (1909),
the Iowa civil rights statute was applied very narrowly in the case of a
farmers market-type activity that included a food court. The Brown court
concluded that the food court was not “a place of amusement” under the
Act. Id. at 99, 123 N.W. at 234.
It would certainly be a mistake to conclude that our state was been
free of discriminatory animus in the years following reconstruction. For
example, the soda fountain at the Katz drug store in downtown Des
Moines, an iconic feature of the city’s postwar cultural landscape, declined
to serve African-American patrons in the years after World War II. See
State v. Katz, 241 Iowa 115, 116, 40 N.W.2d 41, 43 (1949). After a
combination of political protest, civil litigation, and criminal prosecution,
the blatant discrimination in the heart of Iowa’s capital city was
discontinued. See id. at 117, 40 N.W.2d at 43. The Katz episode occurred
more than eighty years after the last shot was fired in the Civil War.
Shortly after our decision upholding the criminal conviction in Katz,
the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S.
483, 493, 74 S. Ct. 686, 691 (1954), consistent with much earlier Iowa
judicial precedent, declared that racial segregation in public schools
37
violated the nation’s commitment to equal protection. The reaction in
some quarters to Brown, of course, was bitter. Leading southern
politicians produced the Southern Manifesto, a declaration defiantly
blasting the courts as overstepping their authority. Reva B. Siegel,
Equality Talk: Antisubordination and Anticlassification Values in
Constitutional Struggles over Brown, 117 Harv. L. Rev. 1470, 1488–89 &
n.59 (2004). Yet, a decade later, after events including the murders of civil
rights workers and the terrorist bombing of a Birmingham church, Iowa
strengthened its Reconstruction Era statutory regime protecting civil
rights, while important and comprehensive federal legislation protecting
civil rights and voting rights was enacted. See Iowa Civil Rights Act of
1965, Iowa Code ch. 216 (2019); Kenneth W. Mack, Foreword: A Short
Biography of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 67 SMU L. Rev. 229, 242 (2014);
Margaret M. Russell, Cleansing Moments and Retrospective Justice, 101
Mich. L. Rev. 1225, 1226 (2003).
No one, however, believes that the important judicial and legislative
developments of more than fifty years ago has ended racial discrimination
in America. For the most part, however, political and cultural
developments, supported by judicial, legislative, and executive actions,
have driven overt racial discrimination underground. Expressly
discriminatory political appeals of “segregation forever” have generally
disappeared from the public square. But the fact that most overt racism
is now under the radar does not mean it does not exist. See Rose v.
Mitchell, 443 U.S. 545, 558–59, 99 S. Ct. 2993, 3001 (1979) (noting that
more than a century after the Civil War, “racial and other forms of
discrimination still remain a fact of life, in the administration of justice as
in our society as a whole”).
38
Further, social scientists have now thoroughly documented what
has been known for decades, namely, that all of us—judges, lawyers,
legislators, and jurors—have unconscious or implicit biases. Michael B.
Hyman, Implicit Bias in the Courts, 102 Ill. B.J. 40, 42 (2014) (“Implicit bias
weaves its way through the legal system in interactions between attorneys,
clients, jurors, and judges.”). Many of these unconscious biases may be
harmless, if not helpful, to daily living. But to the extent implicit bias
reflects unconscious racial bias, it can be a driver in perpetuating racial
inequality. Id. at 41–42. And there is reason to believe that many of us—
including intelligent and conscientious people of good will—have
unconscious racial bias shaped by our culture and experience. Id. at 43
(“[J]udges, like everyone else, harbor their own set of implicit biases,
shaped by their experiences and identity . . . .”).
The need to address racial bias continues in law enforcement and in
the courts. As noted by Justice Wiggins in State v. Plain, 898 N.W.2d 801,
830 (Iowa 2017) (Wiggins, J., concurring specially), “A recent report by The
Sentencing Project found 25.8% of Iowa’s prison population was black,
while blacks made up only 3.1% of Iowa’s population.” According to a
2016 study, African-Americans in Iowa are seven times more likely than
whites to be arrested for drug possession, even though all available studies
indicate that drug possession and use among African-Americans and
Caucasian Americans is roughly the same. Human Rights Watch & Am.
Civil Liberties Union, Every 25 Seconds: The Human Toll of Criminalizing
Drug Use in the United States 41, 46 (2016). Iowa’s racial disparity in drug
possession arrests was the second worst in the country. Id. at 46. Racial
discrimination persists.
The bottom line is that the struggle for equal justice before the law
is continuing. It can best be understood as a process, not an event. In
39
seeking to advance the process of equal justice before the law, it is
essential that we understand the persistent character of racial
discrimination and its evolving nature. We must recognize that although
overt racial bias is, in most quarters, in retreat, the problem of implicit
bias poses a major challenge and must be addressed. Finally, because of
the intractable and evolving nature of racial bias, we must adopt a
pragmatic and flexible approach to sculpting appropriate judicial remedies
to meet the challenge.
B. Systematic Review of the Jury Process. Given the above
history of the persistent and evolving nature of the struggle for racial
equality, it is not surprising that the effort to promote equal justice under
the law in law enforcement and in our judicial system has been persistent
and evolving too. By way of example, although the United States Supreme
Court in Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 308–09 (1879), abrogated
on other grounds by Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 536–37, & n.19, 95
S. Ct. 692, 700–01 & n.19 (1975), declared that African-Americans could
not be disqualified as jurors, experience showed that Strauder was
unenforced if not unenforceable. Decades later, the United States
Supreme Court advanced beyond Strauder in Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S.
202, 226, 85 S. Ct. 824, 839 (1965). Yet, Swain proved inadequate to the
task as well, and was overruled twenty years later in Batson v. Kentucky,
476 U.S. 79, 96, 106 S. Ct. 1712, 1723 (1986). And today, scholars believe
we need to move beyond Batson in advancing the notion of “equality before
the law” for African-Americans. See, e.g., Jeffrey Bellin & Junichi P.
Semitsu, Widening Batson’s Net to Ensnare More Than the Unapologetically
Bigoted or Painfully Unimaginative Attorney, 96 Cornell L. Rev. 1075, 1108
(2011) [hereinafter Bellin & Semitsu] (stating further measures must be
taken to guard against discrimination in the courts because “Batson
40
cannot be expected to have anything but the most superficial success in
rooting out unconstitutional race- or gender-based peremptory
challenges”). If anything, our civil rights experience suggests that,
particularly when it comes to remedies, judicial approaches should not be
cast in stone but should be shaped and sculpted in light of experience
arising from their application.
When we approach a case with civil rights implications, it is
important to think systemically. Important issues involving the make-up
of the venire pool, the scope of voir dire of potential jurors, the use of
peremptory challenges, and the instructions given to the jury intersect and
act together to promote, or resist, our efforts to provide all defendants with
a fair trial. See Mark W. Bennett, Unraveling the Gordian Knot of Implicit
Bias in Jury Selection: The Problems of Judge-Dominated Voir Dire, the
Failed Promise of Batson, and Proposed Solutions, 4 Harv. L. & Pol’y Rev.
149, 168 (2010) [hereinafter Bennett] (discussing tandem remedies).
For instance, today we have announced a new approach designed to
ensure that the jury pools in our judicial system represent a fair cross
section of the community. These cases reflect a significant, and necessary,
step in vindicating the right of citizens to a fair and impartial jury. I
applaud the court for its approach to fair-cross-section requirements. My
view on this issue is further stated in State v. Lilly, ___ N.W.2d ___, ___
(Iowa 2019) (Appel, J., concurring specially).
But the advances reflected in our approach to fair-cross-section
requirements will be meaningless if a party is able to exercise peremptory
challenges in a fashion that eliminates the few African-Americans who are
on the pool or venire from the petit jury. See Swain, 380 U.S. at 241
(Goldberg, J., dissenting) (noting the interlocking relationship between an
inadequate venire selection system and the use of peremptory challenges).
41
In Iowa, the minority population is sufficiently small that few African-
Americans are likely to be in the venire pool even with the more generous
approach to fair-cross-section challenges commendably embraced in our
cases decided today. See Plain, 898 N.W.2d at 830 (noting that black
people comprise a small percentage of Iowa’s population). It will do little
to advance the cause of impartial juries if the preliminary jury pool is more
representative of the community but all minority members are routinely
eliminated from the jury that actually sits.
Further, if our process is such that it yields few African-American
venire jurors and fewer still African-American petit jurors, we cannot rely
on fair-cross-section- or Batson-type concepts as the only tools to
eliminate racial bias in our jury system. Bennett, 4 Harv. L. & Pol’y Rev.
at 168. The importance of voir dire and jury instructions as tools to
eliminate or reduce the influence of racial bias in our system
proportionately increases as the proportion of African-American or other
minorities on the petit jury decreases. See id.
The degree to which voir dire is effective in rooting out racial
prejudice has been debated by scholars. Compare Jeffrey M. Gaba, Voir
Dire of Jurors: Constitutional Limits to the Right of Inquiry into Prejudice, 48
U. Colo. L. Rev. 525, 533–34 (1977) (“While voir dire may not be completely
effective in discovering prejudice, there are additional objectives, both
proper and improper, which it serves. Furthermore, it is still the primary
mechanism by which prejudicial attitudes are revealed and is thus an
essential—if imperfect—element of the challenge system.”(Footnotes
omitted.)), with Valerie P. Hans & Alayna Jehle, Avoid Bald Men and People
with Green Socks? Other Ways to Improve the Voir Dire Process in Jury
Selection, 78 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 1179, 1179 (2003) (“[V]oir dire is often
ineffective in detecting juror bias . . . .”). I suspect the batting average may
42
not be very high. But while many overtly or implicitly biased jurors may
not be identified in the voir dire process, some plainly are. The fact that
voir dire is not 100% effective, or even 50% effective, in identifying biased
jurors does not mean it should be abandoned, but only that we should
maximize its effectiveness and develop other tools to back it up. For
example, it is clear that voir dire’s effectiveness in rooting our racial
prejudice is maximized by eliminating reliance on judge-directed, closed-
end “yes” or “no” questions that almost universally produce compliant
answers. See Anne M. Payne & Christine Cohoe, Annotation, Jury
Selection and Voir Dire in Criminal Cases, 76 Am. Jur. Trials 127, § 56,
Westlaw (database updated May 2019.) (“It is wise for counsel to avoid
asking questions of prospective jurors during voir dire which can be
answered either yes or no.”). Instead, we should permit attorneys to engage
in individual, open-ended examination of jurors designed to allow the juror
to speak about his or her cultural attitudes. Id. § 23 (“An open-ended
question permits each juror to explain his answer in his own words
through his own thoughts.”). With this approach, voir dire is not remotely
perfected, but it is somewhat enhanced, as a tool to explore potential bias.
On the very back end of the jury process, the United States Supreme
Court, following the lead of many state courts, has opened the door to
exploration of jury deliberation where the process is tainted by egregious
and overt racial discrimination. See Peña-Rodriguez v. Colorado, 580 U.S.
___, ___, 137 S. Ct. 855, 869 (2017). This remedy, however, has been very
narrowly crafted. It amounts to a last ditch backstop for the worst of cases
that come to the attention of the court.
In short, because of the limited number of African-American jurors
who will make it to the jury pool, the possibility that Batson strikes will
eliminate them from the petit jury, and the helpful but limited effectiveness
43
of voir dire as an antibias tool, the court’s instructions to the jury may be
the last, best line of defense against racial bias in our jury system. This is
particularly true with respect to implicit bias. Studies show that
identifying and discussing the possibility of unconscious racial bias can
be effective in minimizing or eliminating it. Cynthia Lee, A New Approach
to Voir Dire on Racial Bias, 5 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. 843, 872 (2015). An
implicit-bias instruction, therefore, should play a part in our effort to
ensure that equality before the law is a reality for African-Americans and
other minorities in our jury system. I further discuss these issues in State
v. Williams, ___ N.W.2d ___, ___ (Iowa 2019) (Appel, J., concurring in part
and dissenting in part).
C. Role for State Courts. Finally, I want to emphasize the
important role of state courts in addressing the continuing challenge of
bringing us closer to the goal of racial equality in our courts. Obviously,
the Iowa Constitution and our supervisory authority over Iowa courts
provides an independent basis for addressing fundamental issues such as
the rights to an impartial jury and to equality before the law. See Iowa
Const. art. I, §§ 1, 6, 9, 10.
But it is also important to note the vibrant constitutional dialogue
that arises when state courts engage in independent constitutional
analysis. Throughout our constitutional history, state court decisions
have been precursors to later developments in federal law. We all know
about how the Iowa Civil Rights cases provided an example for later federal
constitutional adjudication. See, e.g., Lovell, 67 Drake L. Rev. at 189.
There are other, more recent examples of state courts leading the way. For
instance, in 1948, the California Supreme Court in Perez v. Lippold, 198
P.2d 17, 29 (Cal. 1948) (en banc), struck down a state statute invalidating
interracial marriages. Perez laid the groundwork for the pivotal United
44
States Supreme Court case, twenty years later, of Loving v. Virginia, 388
U.S. 1, 2, 87 S. Ct. 1817, 1818–19 (1967). Similarly, after Swain, state
courts rejected the high burdens imposed on those challenging racially
tinged peremptory challenges. For instance, in People v. Wheeler, 583 P.2d
748, 765–67 (Cal. 1978), overruled in part on other grounds by Johnson v.
California, 545 U.S. 162, 164, 173, 125 S. Ct. 2410, 2414, 2419 (2005),
the California Supreme Court, relying on state constitutional provisions
resembling Iowa’s, specifically rejected Swain and developed a far more
workable framework for dealing with racially discriminatory strikes. So
did Massachusetts. See Commonwealth v. Soares, 387 N.E.2d 499, 509–
16 (Mass. 1979). So did Florida. See State v. Neil, 457 So. 2d 481, 485–
87 (Fla. 1984), receded from in part by State v. Johans, 613 So. 2d 1319,
1321 (Fla. 1993). So did New Mexico. See State v. Crespin, 612 P.2d 716,
717–18 (N.M. Ct. App. 1980). These cases, all cited later by the United
States Supreme Court in Batson, blazed the way for the further
development of federal constitutional law. 476 U.S. at 82 n.1, 106 S. Ct.
at 1715 n.1. And, after Batson, a number of state supreme courts
extended the Batson rule to cover gender under their own state
constitutions. See, e.g., State v. Levinson, 795 P.2d 845, 849–50 (Haw.
1990); Commonwealth v. Hyatt, 568 N.E.2d 1148, 1150 (Mass. 1991);
State v. Gonzales, 808 P.2d 40, 49–50 (N.M. Ct. App. 1991). The United
States Supreme Court later followed suit. J.E.B. v. Ala. ex rel. T.B., 511
U.S. 127, 128–29, 114 S. Ct. 1419, 1421 (1994).
The recent Supreme Court case of Peña-Rodriguez demonstrates the
important role of state courts in developing legal doctrine on the federal
level. 580 U.S. at ___, 137 S. Ct. at 865. In its decision, the Supreme
Court in noted that sixteen states had developed exceptions to their no-
45
impeachment-of-jury-verdict rules in cases involving explicit racial bias in
jury deliberations. Id.
The unmistakable point is that vibrant, independent state
constitutional law has enriched the development not only of the law in
each state, but has promoted the development of federal constitutional law
as well.
II. Challenge Based on Fair Cross Section.
For the reasons expressed in my concurring opinion in Lilly, I am
not convinced that the sole test for the second Duren and Plain prong
should always be one standard deviation. Lilly, ___ N.W.2d at ___; see
Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 364, 99 S. Ct. 664, 668 (1979); Plain, 898
N.W.2d at 826–27. Yet, as indicated there, I think that using a relatively
low statistical deviation threshold may be sufficient to avoid the pitfalls of
the application of the statistical method. The step forward on the fair-
cross-section issue, however, will be meaningless if prosecutors use
peremptory strikes to eliminate minority jurors and if we fail to take other
effective steps to combat racial bias in our court system.
III. Challenge to Peremptory Strike of the Last African-
American Member of a Venire Pool.
In addition to the fair-cross-section issue, this case involves another
important issue, namely, a challenge to the prosecution’s use of a
peremptory challenge to eliminate the last African-American from the jury
pool. In defending the strike, the prosecutor explained that he had
personally prosecuted the juror’s father for three class A felonies and
feared that the potential juror harbored “latent hostility” toward him as a
result. The potential juror, however, stated that she was not close to her
father, that the situation would have no effect on her ability to be an
impartial juror, that her father was treated fairly by the state, that she
46
would not hold the prosecution of her father against the state, that she did
not recognize the prosecutor as someone involved in the prosecution until
the prosecutor brought it up, and that she had no relationship with her
father in any event. The district court found no Batson violation.
Veal argues that the voir dire of the juror negated any legitimate
concern that the prosecutor might have had about latent hostility towards
him, and as a result, he showed pretext under Batson. If we were to find
the State’s exercise of its peremptory challenge of the last African-
American on the jury panel under the circumstances satisfies Batson,
however, Veal urges us to reconsider the application of Batson in the
circumstances of this case where the last potential African-American juror
is stricken from the jury pool. According to Veal, the court should hold
the State to a “very high standard” in these circumstances.
Citing an unpublished court of appeals opinion, Veal asserts that
the prosecutor’s “reasoning seems to fit into that category of facially non-
discriminatory reasoning that disproportionately implicates African-
American potential jurors.” State v. Miller, No. 16-0331, 2017 WL
1088104, at *3 (Iowa Ct. App. Mar. 22, 2017). Veal incorporates at length
the court of appeals discussion, which I reproduce below, of a scholarly
article and a dissenting opinion by Justice Stevens:
“A significantly higher percentage of people of color have
arrest records due to the disproportionate number of stops,
searches, and arrests of people of color.” Vida B. Johnson,
Arresting Batson: How Striking Jurors Based on Arrest Records
Violates Batson, 34 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev. 387, 389 (Spring
2016). Additionally, “Black people are more likely to have
friends and family who are Black. As a result, Black jurors
are more likely than White jurors to have friends and family
who have been arrested.” Id. The logical next step is that
someone who has been arrested themselves or had someone
they care about be arrested is more likely to have negative
views of law enforcement. Id. at 407. While using potential
jurors’ response about law enforcement appears to be race-
neutral, it is likely to have a disparate impact on potential
47
black jurors. See id. at 389 (“Judges and prosecutors then
use the existence of prior arrests of the jurors or the jurors’
friends or family to strike these prospective jurors, in effect
producing juries whose racial compositions are whiter than
that of the respective communities.”); see also Hernandez v.
New York, 500 U.S. 352, 376[, 111 S. Ct. 1859, 1875] (1991)
(Stevens, J., dissenting) (“An avowed justification that has a
significant disproportionate impact will rarely qualify as a
legitimate, race-neutral reason sufficient to rebut the prima
facie case because disparate impact is itself evidence of
discriminatory purpose.”).
Id. Based on the above reasons, Veal asserts that the trial court should
have sustained the Batson challenge and requests a new trial as a result
of the error.
The NAACP has filed an amicus brief in support of Veal challenging
the continued viability of Batson. The NAACP notes that in Foster v.
Chatman, 578 U.S. ___, ___, 136 S. Ct. 1737, 1754–55 (2016), the Supreme
Court required trial courts to engage in a searching inquiry of the
prosecutor’s demeanor and stated justifications for striking jurors of color,
including a comparative juror analysis to determine whether the stated
race-neutral reasons for striking black jurors were in fact even-handedly
applied to white jurors. Further, in Peña-Rodriguez, 580 U.S. at ___, 137
S. Ct. at 868–69, the NAACP points out that the Supreme Court noted that
racially biased comments in jury deliberations could require the trial court
to overturn a jury verdict.
In addition, the NAACP cites cases from Washington State as
providing a better approach. See City of Seattle v. Erickson, 398 P.3d 1124,
1127–31 (Wash. 2017); State v. Saintcalle, 309 P.3d 326, 333–39 (Wash.
2013) (en banc) (plurality opinion). In these cases, the Washington
Supreme Court extensively canvased the shortcomings of Batson
jurisprudence and proposed changes in the judicial approach to
eliminating racial discrimination in the selection of jurors. Erickson, 398
48
P.3d at 1127–31; Saintcalle, 309 P.3d at 333–39. The NAACP suggests
that there is a growing national consensus that the procedural protections
in Batson simply do not work. The NAACP cites a symposium that
appeared in the Iowa Law Review in 2012 on Batson. See Symposium,
Batson at Twenty Five: Perspectives on the Landmark, Reflections on Its
Legacy, 97 Iowa L. Rev. 1393 (2012).
On appeal, the State opposes Veal’s Batson challenge. The State
asserts that the prosecutor in this case presented a nondiscriminatory
reason for the peremptory strike. While the State recognizes that
generalized reasons for striking African-Americans from juries might be
more problematic, the State points out that in this case, the prosecution
had a specific reason tied to the case at hand, namely, that the prosecutor
had tried the father of the prospective juror on a class A felony. Further,
the State rejects the notion that the juror was rehabilitated, noting that
“neutral answers can still conceal deep, unconscious bias.” The State
urges that we give “great deference” to the trial court’s finding crediting
the prosecution’s reason for striking the juror as race neutral.
A. The Road to Batson and Beyond.
1. Introduction. This case involves both state and federal
constitutional questions. In order to illuminate the choices presented in
this case, a survey of how the United States Supreme Court has grappled
with the issue provides context. In addition, exploration of dissents gives
texture to the issues and may recommend to us alternative approaches.
2. From Strauder to Swain. After the Civil War and the passage of
the Reconstruction Amendments, the United States Supreme Court, at
least in theory, sought to protect the right of African-Americans to serve
on juries. The first major case was Strauder, 100 U.S. 303. In Strauder,
the Supreme Court considered the validity of a West Virginia statute that
49
excluded African-Americans from jury service. Id. at 304. The Strauder
Court held that the practice violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Id. at
310.
The Strauder Court recognized the importance of having
representation of the unpopular on the jury. According to the Strauder
Court, the rights associated with jury trials were designed “to make
impossible what Mr. Bentham called ‘packing juries.’ ” Id. at 309.
Further, the Strauder Court declared,
It is well known that prejudices often exist against particular
classes in the community, which sway the judgment of jurors,
and which, therefore, operate in some cases to deny to
persons of those classes the full enjoyment of that protection
which others enjoy.
Id.
Yet the Strauder Court emphasized that the question was not
whether a defendant had a right to “a petit jury composed in whole or in
part of persons of his own race.” Id. at 305. The question was whether all
members of a race may be excluded from the jury by law. Id.
Experience, however, showed Strauder was ineffective. Strauder
made clear, of course, that statutes expressly prohibiting African-
Americans from serving on juries would not pass constitutional muster.
Id. at 304. In at least two cases, the United States Supreme Court
ventured beyond the four corners of Strauder to invalidate convictions of
all white juries where the right of African-Americans to serve on the juries,
though not categorically denied by statute, was “denied in substance and
effect.” Norris v. Alabama, 294 U.S. 587, 590, 597–98, 55 S. Ct. 579, 580,
583–84 (1935) (noting that no witness could recall an African-American
ever serving on a jury); see also Hill v. Texas, 316 U.S. 400, 401–02, 404,
62 S. Ct. 1159, 1160–61 (1942) (observing that commissioners with
50
discretion “consciously omitted to place” any African-Americans on jury
list).
But these prohibitions proved easy to avoid by erecting less
absolute, but nonetheless effective, informal obstacles to prevent African-
American jury service, including the use of peremptory challenges to
eliminate African-Americans from the jury box. By 1961, the United States
Commission on Civil Rights observed that “[t]he practice of racial exclusion
from juries persists today even though it has long stood indicted as a
serious violation of the 14th [A]mendment.” Swain, 380 U.S. at 231, 85
S. Ct. at 842 (first alteration in original) (quoting U.S. Comm’n on Civil
Rights, Justice 103 (1961)).
The informal obstacles to African-Americans serving on juries were
evident in Swain. In Swain, a 19 year-old African-American was convicted
of raping a seventeen-year-old white girl and sentenced to death. Id.
African-Americans had been on the venire, but none had sat on a petit
jury in the county for fifteen years. Id. at 205, 85 S. Ct. at 828 (majority
opinion). Swain claimed a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Id. at 203–04, 85 S. Ct. at 826.
The Swain majority rejected his challenge. The Swain majority
emphasized that an African-American is not entitled to a proportionate
number of his race on the jury. Id. at 208, 85 S. Ct. at 829. Although
Swain stated that systematic exclusion of African-Americans from the jury
might violate the Fourteenth Amendment, the Swain majority concluded
that such systematic exclusion was not shown in the case. See id. at 226–
27, 85 S. Ct. at 839. The Swain majority recognized that African-
Americans had not served on petit juries in fifteen years but concluded
that the record was insufficient to show that the exclusion of African-
51
Americans from the petit juries was due to the prosecutor alone. Id. at
226–28, 85 S. Ct. at 839–40.
In support of its conclusion, the Swain Court cited parts of the
record showing that defense lawyers may have sometimes participated in
the striking of African-American jurors. Id. at 225 & n.31, 85 S. Ct. at 838
& n.31. Thus, although no African-American juror had ever served on a
petit jury in the county in fifteen years, the Swain majority reasoned that
that was not necessarily due to systematic use of peremptory challenges
by the prosecutions. Id. at 225–26, 85 S. Ct. at 838–39. The Swain
majority emphasized the requirement of “purposeful or deliberate denial”
of the right of African-Americans to participate as jurors. Id. at 203–04,
85 S. Ct. at 826. Anything short of systematic purposeful or deliberate
denial “in case after case” by the prosecution did not affront the Equal
Protection Clause. Id. at 223, 85 S. Ct. at 837.
Justice Goldberg, joined by Chief Justice Warren and Justice
Douglas, dissented. Id. at 228, 85 S. Ct. at 840 (Goldberg, J., dissenting).
Justice Goldberg wrote it was undisputed that no African-American had
sat on a petit jury in the county “within the memory of persons [then]
living.” Id. at 231–32, 85 S. Ct. at 842. He wrote that “[t]he very point” of
the court’s prior cases was to prevent deliberate and systematic exclusion
of African-Americans “not merely from being placed upon the panel, but
from serving on the jury.” Id. at 239, 85 S. Ct. at 846. Further, Justice
Goldberg wrote that the majority overlooks that the exclusion of African-
American jurors in the county “results from the interlocking of an
inadequate venire selection system . . . and the use of peremptory
challenges.” Id. at 241, 85 S. Ct. at 847.
3. Post-Swain independent state constitutional law development.
After Swain, a number of state courts rejected its limitations under their
52
state constitutions. In Wheeler, the California Supreme Court considered
the question of peremptory challenges based on race under Article I,
section 16 of the California Constitution. 583 P.2d at 754. The Wheeler
court declared that if a defendant made a prima facie showing of
discrimination based on race, the burden of justification would then shift
to the prosecution that the strike was not based on group bias alone. Id.
at 764–65. If the prosecution’s justification is not sustained, the jury
would fail to comply with the fair-cross-section requirements of the
California Constitution. Id. at 765.
Notably, the Wheeler court recognized that Swain provided less
protection. Id. at 767. The Wheeler court concluded that under Swain it
was practically impossible for a defendant to show systematic exclusion of
a racial group across multiple juries as a result of cost and lack of
information. Id. 767–68. The court also noted that “each and every
defendant not merely the last in this artificial sequence is constitutionally
entitled to trial by a jury drawn from a representative cross-section of the
community.” Id. at 767. The Wheeler court cited an annotation and its
own experience for the proposition that since Swain, no defendant had
succeeded in applying the test. Id. at 768. Noting that “[i]t demeans the
Constitution to declare a fundamental personal right under that charter
and at the same time make it virtually impossible for an aggrieved citizen
to exercise that right,” the Wheeler court declared that the rule of Swain
was not to be followed in California courts. Id. State appellate courts in
several other jurisdictions came to essentially the same conclusions under
the jury trial rights established in their state constitutions. See, e.g., Neil,
457 So. 2d at 485; Soares, 387 N.E.2d at 509–16.
4. Taking the hint: Abandonment of Swain for Batson. Spurred by
state court constitutional precedent, the Supreme Court reconsidered
53
Swain in Batson, 476 U.S. at 82, 106 S. Ct. at 1714–15. In Batson, the
African-American defendant had been indicted on charges of second-
degree burglary and receipt of stolen goods. Id. at 82, 106 S. Ct. at 1715.
The prosecutor used peremptory challenges to remove all four African-
Americans on the venire. Id. at 83, 106 S. Ct. at 1715. Writing for the
majority, Justice Powell stated that the case required reexamination of the
holding in Swain concerning the evidentiary burden placed on a criminal
defendant who claims an equal protection violation due to the state’s use
of peremptory challenges to exclude African-Americans from the petit jury.
Id. at 90, 106 S. Ct. at 1719.
Largely following contemporaneous state supreme court precedent,
the United States Supreme Court departed from the “crippling burden” of
Swain and adopted a three-step approach to claims of racial
discrimination in the exercise of peremptory challenges. Id. at 92–94, 106
S. Ct. at 1721. Under Batson, the defendant first must make a prima facie
case of purposeful discrimination. Id. at 93–94, 106 S. Ct. at 1721. If the
defendant presents a prima facie case, the burden then shifts to the state
to articulate a racially neutral basis for the strike. Id. at 94, 106 S. Ct. at
1721. If the state articulates a racially neutral reason, the court must
then decide whether the articulated reason is pretextual. Johnson, 545
U.S. at 168, 125 S. Ct. at 2416.
Justice Marshall applauded the ruling but feared it would prove
unworkable. Batson, 476 U.S. at 102–03, 106 S. Ct. at 1726 (Marshall,
J., concurring). In a prescient opinion, Justice Marshall noted that any
prosecutor could easily assert facially neutral reasons for striking a juror
and that courts would be hard-pressed to second guess the judgment. Id.
at 106, 106 S. Ct. at 1728. Justice Marshall noted apparently neutral
“ ‘seat-of-the-pants instincts’ may often be just another term for racial
54
prejudice.” Id. Justice Marshall concluded that the only way to
accomplish the goal of eliminating racial discrimination in peremptory
challenges was to eliminate them completely. Id. at 107, 106 S. Ct. at
1728–29.
5. Post-Batson Supreme Court developments limiting (and
expanding?) Batson. After Batson, the Supreme Court decided a number
of cases that affected the importance of the decision. In Holland v. Illinois,
493 U.S. 474, 478, 110 S. Ct. 803, 806 (1990), in a divided 5–4 majority
opinion, Justice Scalia remarkably concluded that a prosecutor’s use of
peremptory challenges to eliminate a distinctive group in the community
does not deprive a defendant of a Sixth Amendment right. Further, in
Hernandez, 500 U.S. at 360, 111 S. Ct. at 1867 (plurality opinion), in
another divided opinion, Justice Kennedy wrote for a plurality that
peremptory strikes against Hispanic jurors—made on the asserted ground
that they might not accept the court’s translator as the official record of
the proceedings—was not invalid notwithstanding the disproportionate
impact of the strikes on the jury.
A remarkable opinion, Purkett v. Elem, 514 U.S. 765, 769, 115 S. Ct.
1769, 1771 (1995) (per curiam), gave no encouragement to those who
wanted Batson to have “teeth.” In this case, the prosecutor explained that
he struck two African-American juror because of their facial hair. Id. The
per curiam opinion emphasized that the facial hair issue was race neutral
and satisfied step two of the Batson formula. Id. The Court emphasized
that the asserted race-neutral reason did not need to be even minimally
persuasive or plausible. Id. at 768–69, 115 S. Ct. at 1771. The per curiam
opinion stressed that a trial court judge must first make the determination
as to whether the asserted reason was pretext, and that such a
determination would be presumed correct and reversed only if not fairly
55
supported by the record. Id. at 769, 115 S. Ct. at 1771. In dissent, Justice
Stevens, joined by Justice Breyer, stated that it was not too much to
require that the prosecutor’s purported neutral reason be trial related. Id.
at 775, 115 S. Ct. at 1774 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
Yet the ability to prove a Batson violation was not impossible. In
Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. 231, 235–36, 125 S. Ct. 2317, 2322 (2005), in
another divided decision so characteristic of Batson progeny, Justice
Souter for a six-member majority reversed a state court determination that
the striking of ten out of eleven black venire persons by a prosecutor from
the notorious Dallas County District Attorney’s office was not racially
motivated.
Justice Souter began by noting that the test developed in Swain
requiring an extended pattern of discrimination left a prosecutor’s use of
peremptory challenges “largely immune from constitutional scrutiny.” Id.
at 239, 125 S. Ct. at 2324 (quoting Batson, 476 U.S. at 92–93, 106 S. Ct.
at 1721). But Batson, Justice Souter wrote, had a weakness of its own,
namely, that although focus on the strikes in an individual trial might be
theoretically sufficient, a Batson violation might nonetheless be hard to
prove to the satisfaction of a wavering court without systemic
discrimination. See id. at 239–40, 125 S. Ct. at 2325.
Justice Souter chopped and diced the evidence. He generally noted
that the prosecution used its peremptory strikes to exclude 91% of the
eligible African-American venire members from the jury pool. Id. at 240–
41, 125 S. Ct. at 2325. But mostly, Justice Souter examined the side-by-
side comparisons of some black panelists who were struck and white
panelists allowed to serve. Id. at 241–51, 125 S. Ct. at 2325–31. For
example, Justice Souter noted that one African-American potential juror
was struck because the prosecutor inaccurately characterized his views
56
on the death penalty and religion, even as white potential jurors who
expressed reservations about imposing the death penalty were not struck.
Id. at 243–45, 125 S. Ct. at 2327–28. With respect to another potential
juror, Justice Souter also noted shifting explanations by the state to
defend one of its peremptory strikes which, according to Justice Souter,
“reeks of afterthought.” Id. at 246, 125 S. Ct. at 2328. With respect to a
third juror, Justice Souter found that while the purported reason for
striking the African-American juror for her views on the death penalty
seemed reasonable on its face, the purported reason was severely undercut
by the prosecution’s failure to object to other jurors who gave similar
answers. Id. at 248, 125 S. Ct. at 2329–30.
In addition, Justice Souter noted that the prosecution engaged in a
jury shuffle—literally a shuffling of cards representing jurors—whenever
African-American jurors tended to be in the front rows of the venire panel
and thus more likely to be picked for the jury than those seated at back.
Id. at 253–54, 125 S. Ct. at 2332–33. Further, Justice Souter noted that
graphic scripts related to the death penalty were read to African-American
venire members, while bland descriptions were read to white prospective
jurors. Id. at 255–56, 125 S. Ct. at 2333–34.
Finally, Justice Souter cited the history of the Dallas County District
Attorney’s office. Id. at 263–64, 125 S. Ct. at 2338–39. That history
showed prosecutors marked the race of each potential juror on their juror
cards and a manual, written in 1968 yet available to one of the prosecutors
in Miller-El, outlined the reasons for striking African-American jurors. Id.
at 264, 125 S. Ct. at 2339.
Even with all the evidence, Justice Thomas, joined by Chief Justice
Rehnquist and Justice Scalia, dissented. Id. at 274, 125 S. Ct. at 2344
(Thomas, J., dissenting). Among other things, the dissent emphasized that
57
Justice Souter relied on evidence such as juror questionnaires and juror
cards that were not provided to the Texas courts. Id. at 279, 125 S. Ct. at
2347. Justice Thomas further found, among other things, that the
majority misread the voir dire transcripts, utilized claims of disparate
questioning that did not fit the facts, and engaged in pure speculation
about the jury shuffles. Id. at 286, 296, 304, 125 S. Ct. at 2351, 2357,
2361–62.
Justice Breyer concurred. Id. at 266, 125 S. Ct. at 2340 (Breyer, J.,
concurring). But he took up the mantle of Justice Marshall in his Batson
dissent. Id. at 266–67, 125 S. Ct. at 2340. Justice Breyer noted that in
this case, twenty-three judges reviewed the matter, with six finding a
violation of Batson and sixteen to the contrary. Id. at 267, 125 S. Ct. at
2340. He noted that judges are put in the awkward, and sometimes
hopeless, task of second guessing a prosecutor’s judgments. Id. at 267,
125 S. Ct. at 2341. According to Justice Breyer, it becomes impossible for
a judge to distinguish between a “ ‘seat-of-the-pants’ peremptory
challenge” and “ ‘seat-of-the-pants’ racial stereotype.” Id. at 268, 125
S. Ct. at 2341. Justice Breyer extensively cited studies tending to show
that Batson had not been successful in rooting out racial stereotyping in
the use of peremptory challenges. Id. at 268–69, 125 S. Ct. at 2341–42.
Justice Breyer also observed that “the law’s antidiscrimination command
and a peremptory jury-selection system that permits or encourages the
use of stereotypes work at cross-purposes.” Id. at 271–72, 125 S. Ct. at
2343. Justice Breyer concluded that the case demonstrated the need to
reconsider Batson’s test and the peremptory challenge system as a whole.
Id. at 272–73, 125 S. Ct. at 2343–44.
Yet another Batson case, Felkner v. Jackson, 562 U.S. 594, 131
S. Ct. 1305 (2011) (per curiam), gives one pause. One potential juror in
58
this case was an African-American who stated that he had been stopped
by police numerous times. Id. at 595, 131 S. Ct. at 1306. The prosecutor
exercised a peremptory challenge, fearing the potential juror would not be
favorable to law enforcement. Id. Of course, the experience of “Driving
While Black” is common among African-Americans. See David A. Harris,
The Stories, The Statistics, and the Law: Why “Driving While Black” Matters,
84 Minn. L. Rev. 265, 266 (1999). Yet the Supreme Court upheld the
challenge in a per curiam opinion. Felkner, 562 U.S. at 598, 131 S. Ct. at
1307. The Felkner result suggests that any young African-American male
who has been stopped by police is subject to exclusion from the jury.
Finally, I consider the recent Supreme Court case of Foster, 578 U.S.
___, 136 S. Ct. 1737. In Foster, the defendant had been convicted of
murder and sentenced to death thirty years before the appeal. Id. at ___,
136 S. Ct. at 1742–43. He claimed that the prosecution violated Batson
in the exercise of peremptory strikes at trial. Id. at ___, 136 S. Ct. at 1742.
After the Georgia courts denied relief, the Supreme Court granted
certiorari. Id. at ___, 136 S. Ct. at 1742–43.
Interestingly, after his conviction, Foster was able to obtain 103
pages of the prosecution’s file under the Georgia Open Records Act. Id. at
___, ___, 136 S. Ct. at 1743–44, 1747. Documents in the file, not available
to the defense at time of trial, revealed numerous racial references. Id. An
“N” appeared before the name of each African-American juror, and a list of
jurors to be stricken listed all five African-Americans at the top. Id.
In an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the Foster Court found the
strikes of two African-American jurors were pretextual. Id. at ___, 136
S. Ct. at 1754–55. The Foster Court engaged in extensive comparative
analysis of the questions and responses of white and African-American
jurors. Id. at ___, 136 S. Ct. at 1748–55. The Foster Court concluded that
59
the asserted neutral reasons were contradicted by the record or difficult to
accept because white jurors with the same traits or answers were accepted
by the prosecution. Id. at ___, 136 S. Ct. at 1754. The Foster Court further
relied on the “definite NO” list, the first five names of which were African-
American and all of whom were struck but one who was excused for cause.
Id. at ___, 136 S. Ct. at 1755.
Justice Thomas dissented. Id. at ___, 136 S. Ct. at 1761 (Thomas,
J., dissenting). Aside from a jurisdictional issue, Justice Thomas
questioned the use of information on the voir dire process obtained by
Foster years after his conviction. Id. According to Justice Thomas, the
uncovering of new evidence does not justify upending the deferential
Batson framework. Id. at ___, 136 S. Ct. at 1766. Aside from the use of
new evidence, Justice Thomas believed the Court should defer to the
courts in Georgia who had the opportunity to conduct their own
comparative analysis and make their own credibility determinations. Id.
at ___, 136 S. Ct. at 1767–69.
B. State Court Responses to Batson.
1. Revising Batson: Eliminating step one. What constitutes a prima
facie case under step one of Batson has confused the courts and
commentators. Several states have decided to eliminate step one
altogether. For instance, in Johans, 613 So. 2d at 1321–22, the Florida
Supreme Court eliminated the first prong of the Batson inquiry under
Florida law. All that was required was that the person eliminated from the
jury be a member of a minority group. See id. The Connecticut Supreme
Court took a similar step in State v. King, 735 A.2d 267, 279 & n.18 (Conn.
1999). In State v. Daniels, 122 P.3d 796, 800 (Haw. 2005), the Hawaii
Supreme Court held that a prima facie case of discriminatory purpose is
automatically established “if the effect of the prosecution’s exercise of its
60
peremptory challenges is to exclude from the jury all members of the same
protected group as the defendant, and the defense raises a Batson
challenge.” Id. The departure from the Batson framework in these cases
is not revolutionary but demonstrates the ability of state supreme courts
to exercise their own pragmatic judgment under state law when dealing
with the question of peremptory strikes.
2. Strengthening Batson (Batson with teeth). Another state court
reformist approach to Batson is reflected in cases that employ what might
be referred to colloquially as “Batson with teeth.” These cases tend to focus
on the second prong of Batson and seek to be at least somewhat more
demanding on what the state must show to demonstrate a racially neutral
basis for a strike.
For instance, in Ex Parte Bruner, 681 So. 2d 173, 176 (Ala. 1996),
the Alabama Supreme Court followed a “quasi-Batson” approach. When a
movant meets the first prong of Batson, the state must “articulat[e] a clear,
specific, and legitimate reason for the challenge which relates to the
particular case to be tried, and which is nondiscriminatory.” Id. at 178–79
(alteration in original) (quoting Ex parte Branch, 526 So. 2d 609, 623 (Ala.
1987)).
Similarly, the Florida Supreme Court has emphasized that, under
the second prong of its approach to Batson, the prosecution must identify
a “clear and reasonably specific” race-neutral explanation that is related
to the trial at hand. Spencer v. State, 238 So. 3d 708, 712 (Fla. 2018)
(quoting State v. Slappy, 522 So. 2d 18, 22 (Fla. 1988), receded from in
part by Melbourne v. State, 679 So. 2d 759, 764–65 (Fla. 1996)).
A substantial number of commentators seek to work within the
Batson framework but provide greater potential for effective enforcement.
See Bellin & Semitsu, 96 Cornell L. Rev. at 1121–25 (suggesting higher
61
standard of proof to rebut discriminatory motive without requiring finding
of pretext); Camille A. Nelson, Batson, O.J., and Snyder: Lessons from an
Intersecting Trilogy, 93 Iowa L. Rev. 1687, 1703 (2008) (arguing Batson
challenge should be sustained where evidence “fits” racial motivation more
easily than race-neutral reason).
3. Reconsidering Batson: State of Washington. The Supreme Court
of Washington has addressed Batson jurisprudence recently in three
important cases. These cases thoroughly highlight the pressure points in
current Batson jurisprudence. In addition, the Washington court has now
promulgated a rule revamping how Batson-type challenges will be treated
in state court. The Washington experience suggests that Batson
jurisprudence may be on the verge of reformulation in state courts.
The first case, Saintcalle, 309 P.3d at 329, involved a challenge to a
conviction of first-degree felony murder because the prosecution struck
the only black venire person from the jury pool. The potential juror in
Saintcalle knew someone who had recently been murdered. Id. at 331.
When asked how she would feel about sitting on a murder trial, the juror
told the lawyers, “I don’t know how I’m going to react.” Id. The prosecution
exercised a peremptory strike on the ground that there was a realistic
possibility that the juror might be “lost” at the end of the trial. See id. at
340. The district court observed the juror and agreed that she was having
difficulties and that the prosecution’s strike was legitimate and race
neutral. Id.
Over a dissent, the Saintcalle plurality, applying Batson, upheld the
trial court and affirmed the conviction under the court’s prevailing
precedent. Id. At the same time, however, the Saintcalle plurality explored
its approach to Batson to determine whether its approach was “robust
62
enough to effectively combat race discrimination in the selection of juries.”
Id. at 329, 333–39.
The Saintcalle plurality noted that race discrimination in courtrooms
raises a serious problem but that Batson, though designed to escape the
crippling burden of proof in prior cases involving racial discrimination
concerning juries, created its own crippling burden. Id. at 333–35. The
Saintcalle plurality noted that the requirement of conscious discrimination
was especially disconcerting because “it seemingly requires judges to
accuse attorneys of deceit and racism in order to sustain a Batson
challenge.” Id. at 338.
The Saintcalle plurality further noted while Batson dealt with
purposeful discrimination, discrimination today “is frequently
unconscious” but not “any less pernicious.” Id. at 336. The Saintcalle
plurality noted that research showed that “people will act on unconscious
bias far more often if reasons exist giving plausible deniability.” Id. The
Saintcalle plurality observed that “[a] strict ‘purposeful discrimination’
requirement thus blunts Batson’s effectiveness and blinds its analysis to
unconscious racism.” Id. at 338.
As a first step, the Saintcalle plurality stated that the purposeful
discrimination requirement of Batson should be replaced with a
requirement which “accounts for and alerts trial courts to the problem of
unconscious bias.” Id. at 339. The Saintcalle plurality suggested that
it might make sense to require a Batson challenge to be
sustained if there is a reasonable probability that race was a
factor in the exercise of the peremptory or where the judge
finds it is more likely than not that, but for the defendant’s
race, the peremptory would not have been exercised.
Id. In the alternative, however, the Saintcalle plurality recognized that it
may be that the problem of racial discrimination in jury selection is so dire
63
that the only solution is elimination of peremptory challenges altogether.
Id.
The Saintcalle plurality reasoned that allowing systematic removal
of minority jurors will “create a badge of inferiority, cheapening the value
of the jury verdict.” Id. at 337. The Saintcalle plurality cited research that
indicates that “compared to diverse juries, all-white juries tend to spend
less time deliberating, make more errors, and consider fewer perspectives.”
Id.
A concurring opinion by Justice González provided an even more
extended analysis of Batson than the Saintcalle plurality. Id. at 350–68
(González, J., concurring). Justice González began his analysis with a
review of the voir dire process. Id. at 351. Justice González observed that
“[w]ith limited information and time, and a lack of any reliable way to
determine the subtle biases of each prospective juror, attorneys tend to
rely heavily on stereotypes and generalizations in deciding how to exercise
peremptory challenges.” Id. at 353. Jurors are excused based on “rough
and rapid” and “superficial judgments.” Id. at 355.
After stressing the limitations of the voir dire process, Justice
González explored the contours of racial bias in jury selection. Id. He
reviewed studies from Washington State and other jurisdictions, coming
to the conclusion that “racial discrimination in the use of peremptory
challenges is widespread.” Id. at 356–58.
Justice González asserted that for several reasons, “[c]ase-by-case
adjudication and appellate review under Batson cannot effectively combat
the widespread racial discrimination that underlies the use of peremptory
challenges.” Id. at 358. First, Justice González observed that the presence
of racial discrimination remains entirely imperceptible to the opposing
party and the trial judge. Id. Second, Justice González wrote that “even
64
if an objection is made, plausible race-neutral reasons are quite easy to
conjure up in any given case.” Id. at 359. Third, Justice González
observed that there is usually no way for a trial court to accurately and
reliably determine whether a given peremptory challenge is racially
discriminatory, noting, among other things, that trial judges may be
hesitant to question the integrity or self-awareness of counsel. Id. Fourth,
Justice González declared “there is no way for appellate courts to provide
sufficiently meaningful review” of trial court decisions where
inconsistencies might be ambiguous and the record of the rapid voir dire
may not have explored the comparative characteristics of other jurors. Id.
at 360. Finally, Justice González stated that too many unanswered
questions remain under Batson, including which groups are protected,
how a prima facie case is established and reviewed on appeal, how dual
motive cases should be considered, and how to deal with questions of
unconscious bias. Id. at 360–61. Justice González concluded that
application of Batson “will continue to engender confusion and needless
administrative and litigation costs, while racial discrimination in the use
of peremptory challenges—both conscious and unconscious—continues
unabated.” Id. at 361.
Justice González next made the case for elimination of peremptory
challenges. Id. at 362. Justice González noted that peremptory challenges
contribute to the underrepresentation of minority groups on juries even in
the absence of purposeful discrimination, impose substantial
administrative and litigation costs, result in juries that are less effective
and less productive, and amplify the underlying resource disparity among
litigants. Id. at 362–63.
On the other hand, Justice González asserted that the benefits of
peremptory challenges were minimal. Id. at 363. Justice González
65
marshalled studies to support his view that peremptory challenges were
generally ineffective in excluding unfavorable jurors and concluded that
the notion that impartiality is furthered by allowing litigants to exercise
arbitrary and unsupported juror challenges is a farce. Id. at 364–65.
Yet, on the facts presented, Justice González concluded that the
defendant was not entitled to relief because the erroneous allowance of a
peremptory challenge does not warrant reversal in every case. Id. at 369.
Justice Chambers, however, came to a different conclusion. Id. at 371
(Chambers, J., dissenting).
According to Justice Chambers, Batson “was a great, symbolic step
forward” but “was doomed from the beginning because it requires one
elected person to find that another elected person (or one representing an
elected person) acted with a discriminatory purpose.” Id. Justice
Chambers urged that the court, in the exercise of its supervisory power,
“hold that a prima facie case of discrimination is established when the sole
remaining venire member of a constitutional cognizable racial group is
peremptorily challenged.” Id.
The Washington Supreme Court returned to the Batson issue in
Erickson, 398 P.3d at 1126. In this case, a black man was charged with
unlawful use of a weapon and resisting arrest. Id. In voir dire, the
prosecutor exercised a peremptory challenge against the only African-
American on the jury panel. Id. Unlike in Saintcalle, the court was
explicitly asked to alter the standard framework of the Batson analysis.
Id. The Washington Supreme court proceeded to do so. Id.
The Erickson court adopted a “bright-line rule” and concluded that
a peremptory strike of the only African-American on a jury panel gives rise
to a prima facie case under Batson. Id. Because the passage of time
prevented the district court from conducting a reasonable evaluation of
66
the underlying basis for the strike, the Erickson court concluded that a
remand for a new trial was the appropriate remedy. Id. at 1131.
Justice Stephens concurred in the result, but emphasized that the
Washington Supreme Court had a pending rulemaking to reconfigure
Batson so that intentional discrimination must no longer be proved. Id. at
1133 (Stephens, J., concurring). Justice Stephens characterized the
debate surrounding the proposed rule as “robust and informative.” Id. He
noted that the court in its decision had not “fixed the problem” and
stressed that the court was “unanimous in its commitment to eradicate
racial bias from our jury system, and that [the court would] work with all
partners in the justice system to see this through.” Id.
Finally, the Washington Supreme Court considered a Batson-type
issue in State v. Jefferson, 429 P.3d 467, 470 (Wash. 2018). In Jefferson,
the prosecution exercised a peremptory challenge to remove the last
African-American from the jury pool. Id. The stated reasons were that the
juror thought voir dire was “a waste of time”, the juror had specific
knowledge of the movie 12 Angry Men, and the juror in a prior trial had
brought into jury deliberations outside discussions. Id. at 472.
The Jefferson court first concluded that, under Batson, there would
be no violation. Id. The Jefferson court also concluded that Washington’s
new rule related to jury selection would not apply to the proceeding. Id.
at 477. But the Jefferson court proceeded to apply a “new” Batson test to
decide the issue. Id. at 480.
The Jefferson court departed from step three in Batson. Id. Under
the new formulation, the Jefferson court stated the question on step three
of the analysis “is whether ‘an objective observer could view race or
ethnicity as a factor in the use of the peremptory challenge.’ ” Id. The test
was not based on purposeful discrimination, but instead focused on
67
objective analysis. Id. The Jefferson court emphasized that review of this
determination would be de novo. Id.
Applying the test de novo, the Jefferson court determined that the
strike was invalid. Id. at 480–81. The Jefferson court carefully examined
the record and determined that the information the juror brought into a
prior trial was not germane to the issues at hand. Id. at 480.
Promulgated before the Jefferson case but only applying
prospectively, jury selection in Washington is now subject to Washington
General Rule 37. See Wash. Gen. R. 37 (2018). The new rule regulates
peremptory challenges. See id. According to the new rule, “If the court
determines that an objective observer could view race or ethnicity as a
factor,” then the peremptory strike is invalid. Id. R. 37(e). Further, the
new rule emphasizes that “an objective observer is aware that implicit,
institutional, and unconscious biases, in addition to purposeful
discrimination, have resulted in the unfair exclusion of potential jurors in
Washington State.” Id. R. 37(f). The new rule provides a number of factors
to be considered in making the objective determination, including the
number and type of voir dire questions, a comparison of the number and
nature of questions posed to other jurors, whether jurors with similar
answers were stricken, whether the asserted reason asserted might be
disproportionately associated with race or ethnicity, and whether the party
disproportionately used peremptory challenges in the present case or in
past cases. Id. R. 37(g). The new rule provides a list of reasons that are
presumed to be invalid, including having prior contact with law
enforcement, expressing distrust in law enforcement or a belief that law
enforcement engages in racial profiling, having a close relationship with
people who have been stopped for a crime, living in high crime
neighborhoods, having children outside marriage, receiving state benefits,
68
and not being a native English speaker. Id. R. 37(h). Finally, the rule
provides a list of conduct-oriented reasons that have “historically been
associated with improper discrimination,” including sleeping, failure to
make eye contact, body language, and other demeanor-type evidence. Id.
R. 37(i). The new rule further provides that if a party intends to rely on
such conduct as a basis for the exercise of a peremptory challenge, notice
has to be served on the other party. Id. Further, if the demeanor rationale
is not corroborated by the judge or opposing party, that lack of
corroboration could be a basis for invalidating the attempted strike. Id.
The rule, as available at Washington Courts, General Rule 37: Jury
Selection, https://
www.courts.wa.gov/court_rules/?fa=court_rules.rulesPDF&ruleId=gagr3
7&pdf=1 (last visited May 21, 2019), is reproduced herein in Appendix A.
C. Discussion. It seems to me beyond clear that our system’s
approach to achieving a fair cross section of the community in the jury
pool and in ensuring African-Americans receive a fair trial is in need of an
overhaul. We have made a good first step in our revisions of the fair-cross-
section jurisprudence. See Lilly, ___ N.W.2d at ___ (Appel, J., concurring
specially). But it is critically important that the gains made today are not
eliminated by a Batson framework that permits the elimination of African-
American petit jurors through the back door of peremptory challenges.
It seems to me the experience of over thirty years demonstrates not
that Batson is worthless, but rather that it is very ineffective. The reasons
are well known.
First, just like in the fair-cross-section question, Iowa constitutional
law must recognize that African-Americans and other minorities make up
a relatively small proportion of the state’s population. See Plain, 898
N.W.2d at 830 (noting that black people comprise a small percentage of
69
Iowa’s population). Because of this salient fact, the absolute disparity
approach to fair cross section required revision. Likewise, the relatively
small proportion of minorities in Iowa means that it will be relatively easy
for all minority jurors to be eliminated through the exercise of peremptory
challenges. Leonard L. Cavise, The Batson Doctrine: The Supreme Court’s
Utter Failure to Meet the Challenge of Discrimination in Jury Selection, 1999
Wis. L. Rev. 501, 527 (noting that minorities in low population
jurisdictions can be completely eliminated from jury pool through
peremptory challenges). A toothless Batson review in Iowa courts could
eliminate the fair-cross-section gains achieved in today’s cases.
Second, the state’s justification offered in Batson’s step two need not
be persuasive and can even be frivolous or utterly nonsensical. See, e.g.,
Purkett, 514 U.S. at 768–69, 115 S. Ct. at 1771 (majority opinion). It has
been charitably described as an “extremely low” threshold. Alafair S.
Burke, Prosecutors and Peremptories, 97 Iowa L. Rev. 1467, 1470 (2012).
Any reasonably imaginative prosecutor can come up with a facially neutral
justification. See Bellin & Semitsu, 96 Cornell L. Rev. at 1090–99
(providing list of cases upholding peremptory strikes for racially neutral
but apparently insubstantial reasons).
Third, once the low threshold of articulating a facially neutral
justification has been crossed, the burden shifts to the defendant to show
pretext and what amounts to purposeful discrimination. Purposeful
discrimination is very difficult to prove. If a prosecutor asserts vague but
racially neutral demeanor observations of a potential juror such as lack of
eye contract, tone of voice, or body language, how does a district court
evaluate such claims? And even in very compelling cases like Miller-El and
Foster, the fractured decisions of the United States Supreme Court on the
factual issue of purposeful discrimination illustrate the problem.
70
Fourth, requiring a district court judge to, in effect, charge the local
prosecutor with lying and racial motivation from the bench in the course
of voir dire is unrealistic. See Coombs v. Diguglielmo, 616 F.3d 255, 264
(3d Cir. 2010) (“No judge wants to be in the position of suggesting that a
fellow professional—whom the judge may have known for years—is
exercising peremptory challenges based on forbidden racial
considerations.”); Saintcalle, 309 P.3d at 338 (plurality opinion) (“A
requirement of conscious discrimination is especially disconcerting
because it seemingly requires judges to accuse attorneys of deceit and
racism in order to sustain a Batson challenge.”); José Felipé Anderson,
Catch Me If You Can! Resolving the Ethical Tragedies in the Brave New
World of Jury Selection, 32 New Eng. L. Rev. 343, 374, 377 (1998) (noting
that judges “have little incentive to use [the power granted by Batson]
against lawyers who regularly practice before them.”).
Fifth, the trial judge will not have a transcript from which to conduct
the kind of meticulous but ultimately highly persuasive comparative
analysis engaged in by Justice Souter in Miller-El, 545 U.S. at 240–51, 125
S. Ct. at 2325–31 (majority opinion). Although it is possible for an
appellate court to later engage in the review, the reliance on the prospect
of reversal many years after a tainted conviction is not very comforting.
Sixth, Batson does not purport to address at all the problem of
implicit bias. Jean Montoya, The Future of the Post-Batson Peremptory
Challenge: Voir Dire by Questionnaire and the “Blind” Peremptory, 29 U.
Mich. J.L. Reform 981, 1024 (1996). But as noted by Justice O’Connor,
“It is by now clear that conscious and unconscious racism can affect the
way white jurors perceive minority defendants and the facts presented at
their trials, perhaps determining the verdict of guilt or innocence.” Georgia
71
v. McCollum, 505 U.S. 42, 68, 112 S. Ct. 2348, 2364 (1992) (O’Connor, J.,
dissenting).
Seventh, Batson’s relatively free reign on peremptory challenges cuts
rough against the grain of the constitutional value of achieving juries with
fair cross sections of the community. By opening the valve on peremptory
challenges, you close the fair-cross-section pipe and lose the benefits of
diversity, which are substantial. See id. at 61, 112 S. Ct. at 2360 (Thomas,
J., concurring) (“[S]ecuring representation of the defendant’s race on the
jury may help to overcome racial bias and provide the defendant with a
better chance of having a fair trial.); Peters v. Kiff, 407 U.S. 493, 503–04,
92 S. Ct. 2163, 2169 (1972) (“When any large and identifiable segment of
the community is excluded from jury service, the effect is to remove from
the jury room qualities of human nature and varieties of human experience
. . . . [I[ts exclusion deprives the jury of a perspective on human events
that may have unsuspected importance in any case that may be
presented.”); State v. LaMere, 2 P.3d 204, 212 (Mont. 2000) (“[D]iversity
begets impartiality.”); Samuel R. Sommers, On Racial Diversity and Group
Decision Making: Identifying Multiple Effects of Racial Composition on Jury
Deliberations, 90 J. Personality & Soc. Psychology 597, 597 (2006)
(explaining that racially diverse juries were more amenable to discussion
of racism, discussed more trial evidence, and made fewer errors).
To some extent, the Supreme Court in Miller-El may have wished to
inject some life into Batson by carefully canvassing the evidence and
modelling how comparative analysis of juror questioning can be used to
establish pretext. But in Miller-El, there were ten African-Americans in the
jury panel. Thus, the voir dire of these ten African-Americans, along with
voir dire of other jurors, provided a mountain of comparative evidence.
Voir dire in Miller-El’s trial comprises eleven volumes and 4662 pages.
72
Miller-El, 545 U.S. at 283, 125 S. Ct. at 2350 (Thomas, J., dissenting). In
Iowa, however, there will likely never be a jury pool with ten African-
Americans in the juror panel and an eleven volume voir dire transcript.
Even with the proposed reforms embraced today, only a few African-
Americans are likely to be in most Iowa jury pools. In these cases, there
will be no body of comparative evidence similar to that developed by
Justice Souter in Miller-El. In Iowa, Miller-El is likely a mirage.
It remains to be seen whether any Batson reform can be successful
in Iowa. It is certainly true that without engaging in a robust review of a
prosecutor’s stated reasons for exclusion, Batson will likely be largely
ineffective in eliminating racial discrimination in jury selection. See Anna
Roberts, Disparately Seeking Jurors: Disparate Impact and the (Mis)use of
Batson, 45 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1359, 1388 (2012) (advocating “proactive,
creative, and assertive” scrutiny of race-neutral justifications).
Given all the problems of Batson, it may well be that an adjustment
here and there may not be enough. I certainly recognize the power of
Justice Marshall’s dissent in Batson, the views of experienced judges, and
the large body of academic commentary that has followed, all of which
suggest that the only solution is the elimination of peremptory challenges
from our jury system. See Morgan v. Commonwealth, 189 S.W.3d 99, 115–
16 (Ky. 2006) (Graves, J., concurring) (expressing the hope that the case
put the state “one step closer to the inevitable implosion of the current
peremptory challenge system”), majority opinion overruled on other grounds
by Shane v. Commonwealth, 243 S.W.3d 336, 341 (Ky. 2007); People v.
Brown, 769 N.E.2d 1266, 1272 (N.Y. 2002) (Kaye, C.J., concurring) (“My
own years . . . dealing with countless Batson challenges, have brought me
far closer to the perception of Justice Thurgood Marshall . . . .”); Tania
73
Tetlow, Why Batson Misses the Point, 97 Iowa L. Rev. 1713, 1735–1736
(2012) (asserting Batson’s problems cannot be solved by mere tinkering).
The elimination of peremptory challenges, of course, is a substantial
proposition and no one has asked for it in this case. What Veal does ask
for, however, is a revision of our approach when the last African-American
is removed from the jury with a peremptory strike.
I agree. When the last African-American member of the jury is
subject to a peremptory challenge, the interest in achieving a fair cross
section of the community on the jury is at its highest point. I think we
should be giving the elimination of the last minority juror through a
peremptory challenge greater scrutiny than other Batson challenges
ordinarily require. For last minority jurors, I think we should require at
this stage that the prosecutor provide a specific challenge related to the
facts of the case. That amounts to Batson with teeth on step two of the
traditional analysis. Then, in step three, as under the Washington
approach, the district court should objectively determine whether the
asserted reason was in fact race neutral or whether race may have played
a role in the strike. See Wash. Gen. R. 37(e); Jefferson, 429 P.3d at 480.
If the district court objectively determines that the reason asserted for the
strike is race neutral, the district court should then objectively weigh the
prosecution’s racially neutral interest in eliminating the juror against the
defendant’s interest in a jury composed of a fair cross section of the
community. See Tania Tetlow, Solving Batson, 56 Wm. & Mary L. Rev.
1859, 1894–1900 (2015) (proposing a balancing of prosecution’s neutral
interest against defendant’s fair-cross-section interest).
Applying this test, I would hold that the strike of the last African-
American juror was invalid. Based on my review of the record, I would
credit the prosecution’s reason for the strike as race neutral based on
74
objective analysis of the facts. I would then proceed to the balancing test.
While the prosecution may have had an interest in exclusion of the juror,
the juror appeared to have very little contact with her father and little if
any bitterness arising out of his past prosecution. More importantly, she
was the last African-American member of the venire pool. On balance, I
would conclude that Veal’s interest in a fair cross section outweighed the
prosecution’s interest in disqualifying the juror. Because an error in jury
selection persists through the entire course of proceeding, I would reverse
Veal’s conviction and remand for a new trial. See Tankleff v. Senkowski,
135 F.3d 235, 248 (2d Cir. 1998).
Wiggins, J., joins this concurrence in part and dissent in part.
75
APPENDIX A
General Rules
GR 37
JURY SELECTION
(a) Policy and Purpose. The purpose of this rule is to eliminate the
unfair exclusion of potential jurors based on race or ethnicity.
(b) Scope. This rule applies in all jury trials.
(c) Objection. A party may object to the use of a peremptory
challenge to raise the issue of improper bias. The court may also raise this
objection on its own. The objection shall be made by simple citation to this
rule, and any further discussion shall be conducted outside the presence
of the panel. The objection must be made before the potential juror is
excused, unless new information is discovered.
(d) Response. Upon objection to the exercise of a peremptory
challenge pursuant to this rule, the party exercising the peremptory
challenge shall articulate the reasons the peremptory challenge has been
exercised.
(e) Determination. The court shall then evaluate the reasons given
to justify the peremptory challenge in light of the totality of circumstances.
If the court determines that an objective observer could view race or
ethnicity as a factor in the use of the peremptory challenge, then the
peremptory challenge shall be denied. The court need not find purposeful
discrimination to deny the peremptory challenge. The court should explain
its ruling on the record.
(f) Nature of Observer. For purposes of this rule, an objective
observer is aware that implicit, institutional, and unconscious biases, in
addition to purposeful discrimination, have resulted in the unfair
exclusion of potential jurors in Washington State.
(g) Circumstances Considered. In making its determination, the
circumstances the court should consider include, but are not limited to,
the following:
(i) the number and types of questions posed to the prospective juror,
which may include consideration of whether the party exercising the
peremptory challenge failed to question the prospective juror about the
alleged concern or the types of questions asked about it;
(ii) whether the party exercising the peremptory challenge asked
significantly more questions or different questions of the potential juror
against whom the peremptory challenge was used in contrast to other
jurors;
(iii) whether other prospective jurors provided similar answers but
were not the subject of a peremptory challenge by that party;
(iv) whether a reason might be disproportionately associated with a
race or ethnicity; and
(v) whether the party has used peremptory challenges
disproportionately against a given race or ethnicity, in the present case or
in past cases.
(h) Reasons Presumptively Invalid. Because historically the
following reasons for peremptory challenges have been associated with
76
improper discrimination in jury selection in Washington State, the
following are presumptively invalid reasons for a peremptory challenge:
(i) having prior contact with law enforcement officers;
(ii) expressing a distrust of law enforcement or a belief that law
enforcement officers engage in racial profiling;
(iii) having a close relationship with people who have been stopped,
arrested, or convicted of a crime;
(iv) living in a high-crime neighborhood;
(v) having a child outside of marriage;
(vi) receiving state benefits; and
(vii) not being a native English speaker.
(i) Reliance on Conduct. The following reasons for peremptory
challenges also have historically been associated with improper
discrimination in jury selection in Washington State: allegations that the
prospective juror was sleeping, inattentive, or staring or failing to make
eye contact; exhibited a problematic attitude, body language, or demeanor;
or provided unintelligent or confused answers. If any party intends to offer
one of these reasons or a similar reason as the justification for a
peremptory challenge, that party must provide reasonable notice to the
court and the other parties so the behavior can be verified and addressed
in a timely manner. A lack of corroboration by the judge or opposing
counsel verifying the behavior shall invalidate the given reason for the
peremptory challenge.
[Adopted effective April 24, 2018.]
77
#17–1453, State v. Veal
McDONALD, Justice (concurring in part, dissenting in part).
I concur in the following divisions of Justice Mansfield’s opinion:
divisions V (speedy trial), VI (Batson challenge), VII (prosecutorial error),
VIII (firearm demonstration), IX (competency hearing), X (excluded
evidence), and XI (sufficiency of the evidence). I dissent from division IV
(fair cross section) of the opinion. On that claim, I would affirm the ruling
of the district court and affirm the conviction without remand. I thus
respectfully concur in part and dissent in part.
I.
On appeal, defendant Peter Veal asserts a fair-cross-section claim
arising under article I, section 10 of the Iowa Constitution. To the extent
Justice Mansfield’s opinion could be interpreted to mean Veal can assert
a state constitutional claim on remand, I respectfully disagree. Veal failed
to present a state constitutional claim in the district court, and the claim
is not preserved for appellate review. It is improper to remand this matter
to allow Veal to assert a claim arising under the state constitution when
he failed to first present the issue to the district court prior to trial or in
his posttrial motion. See State v. Coleman, 890 N.W.2d 284, 286 (Iowa
2017) (stating where a defendant “only identifies [a federal] claim, the state
constitutional claim has not been preserved at the district court”); Van
Gorden v. Schuller, 192 Iowa 853, 859, 185 N.W. 604, 607 (1921) (“Neither
is it within the scope of our appellate jurisdiction to remand this
proceeding to the district court for the making and trial of new issues at
law.”).
II.
Veal also asserts a federal claim arising under the Sixth and
Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. As pertinent
78
here, the Sixth Amendment provides, “In all criminal prosecutions, the
accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial[] by an impartial
jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed
. . . .”
A.
In Taylor v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court held, “[T]he selection of a
petit jury from a representative cross section of the community is an
essential component of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial.” 419
U.S. 522, 528, 95 S. Ct. 692, 697 (1975).
This Sixth Amendment right is not grounded in text or history. See
Holland v. Illinois, 493 U.S. 474, 480, 110 S. Ct. 803, 807 (1990) (“The fair-
cross-section venire requirement is obviously not explicit in this text . . .
.”); see also Berghuis v. Smith, 559 U.S. 314, 334, 130 S. Ct. 1382, 1396
(2010) (Thomas, J., concurring) (“[The right] seems difficult to square with
the Sixth Amendment’s text and history.”); Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S.
357, 371, 99 S. Ct. 664, 672 (1979) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (“The
Constitution does not require, and our jurisprudence is ill served, by a
hybrid doctrine such as that developed in Taylor, and in this case.”);
Taylor, 419 U.S. at 539, 95 S. Ct. at 702 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting)
(“Relying on carefully chosen quotations, [the majority] concludes that the
‘unmistakable import’ of our cases is that the fair-cross-section
requirement ‘is an essential component of the Sixth Amendment right to a
jury trial.’ I disagree. Fairly read, the only ‘unmistakable import’ of those
cases is that due process and equal protection prohibit jury-selection
systems which are likely to result in biased or partial juries.”).
Despite the lack of textual or historical support for a constitutional
right to a jury venire composed of a fair cross section of the community,
the Supreme Court continued to develop the right post-Taylor. In Holland,
79
the Supreme Court explained the right “is derived from the traditional
understanding of how an ‘impartial jury’ is assembled.” 493 U.S. at 480,
110 S. Ct. at 807. The Supreme Court explained the right does not entitle
the accused to a representative jury, but only an impartial one:
The Sixth Amendment requirement of a fair cross
section on the venire is a means of assuring, not a
representative jury (which the Constitution does not demand),
but an impartial one (which it does). Without that
requirement, the State could draw up jury lists in such
manner as to produce a pool of prospective jurors
disproportionately ill disposed towards one or all classes of
defendants, and thus more likely to yield petit juries with
similar disposition. The State would have, in effect, unlimited
peremptory challenges to compose the pool in its favor. The
fair-cross-section venire requirement assures, in other words,
that in the process of selecting the petit jury the prosecution
and defense will compete on an equal basis.
Id. at 480–81, 110 S. Ct. at 807; see Duren, 439 U.S. at 364 n.20, 99 S.
Ct. at 668 n.20 (majority opinion) (“We further explained that this
requirement does not mean ‘that petit juries actually chosen must mirror
the community.’ ” (quoting Taylor, 419 U.S. at 538, 95 S. Ct. at 702)
(majority opinion)).
In Duren, the Supreme Court set forth the elements necessary to
establish a prima facie violation of the right:
In order to establish a prima facie violation of the fair-
cross-section requirement, the defendant must show (1) that
the group alleged to be excluded is a “distinctive” group in the
community; (2) that the representation of this group in venires
from which juries are selected is not fair and reasonable in
relation to the number of such persons in the community; and
(3) that this underrepresentation is due to systematic
exclusion of the group in the jury-selection process.
439 U.S. at 364, 99 S. Ct. at 668. With respect to the third element, the
Supreme Court concluded systematic exclusion requires proof the
underrepresentation is persistent and caused by some particular
mechanism in the jury-selection process. See id. at 366, 99 S. Ct. at 669;
80
Berghuis, 559 U.S. at 328, 130 S. Ct. at 1392–93 (majority opinion)
(explaining the defendant in Duren established a prima facie case when he
showed with “particularity” the “underrepresentation was persistent” and
caused by “two [particular] stages of the jury-selection process”).
B.
Veal failed to establish that the jury pool was not a fair and
reasonable representation of the jury-eligible population. I disagree with
the majority’s decision to nonetheless remand this matter to allow Veal to
try and marshal additional evidence in support of a claim he already lost.
First, as noted in my separate opinion in State v. Lilly, ___ N.W.2d
___, ___ (Iowa 2019) (McDonald, J., concurring in part and dissenting in
part), there is no reliable county-level data regarding the number of eligible
jurors. There is also no reliable county-level data regarding the race or
ethnicity of eligible jurors. It was Veal’s burden to establish a prima facie
case, and the failure to present reliable evidence to support his claim
defeats the claim.
Second, even assuming the data was reliable, the data shows this
jury pool was actually overrepresentative. During the relevant time period,
the population of Webster County was approximately 36,000. Of those,
4.6%, or 1656, were African-American, and 34,344 persons were not
African-American. As I noted in Lilly, there is no reliable information
regarding how many persons in the county were jury-eligible. Setting
aside that particular criticism, using the majority’s assumptions, the
number of eligible African-Americans jurors was approximately 1100 while
the number of jury-eligible others was 26,685. Approximately 700 white
persons and 400 African-Americans were incarcerated at the Fort Dodge
Correctional Facility located in Webster County. This is consistent with
historical census information. See Rose Heyer & Peter Wagner, Prison
81
Policy Initiative, Too Big to Ignore: How Counting People in Prisons Distorted
Census 2000 (2004) [hereinafter Heyer & Wagner],
https://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/toobig/datasearch.php?field=GE
O_NAME&operator=LIKE&q=webster&Submit=Search&field1=&operator1
=&q1=&sortby=&sortorder= [https://perma.cc/7DGC-CT3Y] (containing
data set showing 26.47% of the African-American population in Webster
County in 2000 was incarcerated). The majority agrees that the census
counts prisoners in its census data and that prisoners should be excluded
from determining the jury-eligible population. See Heyer & Wagner,
https://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/toobig/exec_sum.html
[https://perma.cc/CUJ4-SEF7] (“The Census Bureau counts people
incarcerated in state and federal correctional facilities as if they were
residents of the prison town. Although incarcerated people are not a part
of the prison town, they are a part of the community’s statistics.”). If one
removes incarcerated persons from the calculation (assuming all or almost
all are 18 or older), there were 26,285 non-African-American eligible jurors
and only 700 African-American eligible jurors, or 2.6% of all eligible jurors.
The majority concludes the percentage of African-Americans in the jury
pool was 3.27%. Thus, when adjusted for the unique demographics of this
county, the jury pool here was actually overrepresentative of the African-
American community.
In Lilly, the majority concluded that “[a] defendant whose jury pool
has a percentage of the distinctive group at least as large as the percentage
of that group in the jury-eligible population has not had his or her right to
a fair cross section infringed.” ___ N.W.2d at ___. I agree. The defendant’s
fair-cross-section claim fails as a matter of law. This court should affirm
the defendant’s conviction rather than remand.
C.
82
Remand is also improper because Veal failed to establish systematic
exclusion within the meaning of Duren.
Veal’s only allegation of systematic exclusion was that “these jury
pools were only pulled from Driver’s license/ID information and voter
registration.” This court has repeatedly rejected this challenge. See State
v. Huffaker, 493 N.W.2d 832, 834 (Iowa 1992) (approving the use of voter
registration list and motor vehicle operator’s list); State v. Jones, 490
N.W.2d 787, 794 (Iowa 1992) (holding defendant failed to establish a
violation of the fair-cross-section right where the jury manager used voter
registration and motorist/identification lists), overruled on other grounds
by State v. Plain, 898 N.W.2d 801, 822 (Iowa 2017); State v. Johnson, 476
N.W.2d 330, 333 n.1 (Iowa 1991) (“Although we do not reach the merits of
defendant’s contentions, we believe county officials should implement the
directives of Iowa Code chapter 607A. Jury commissions and jury
managers should use the source lists described in sections 607A.3(9) and
607A.22 to fulfill their statutory duties under sections 607A.1 and 607A.2
to provide for jury service a fair cross-section of the population of the area
served by the court.”). These cases are controlling, but the majority
opinion does not address them. It is unclear to me why these long-
standing, controlling precedents do not resolve Veal’s claim.
In addition to the controlling authority, the persuasive authorities
have approved the use of these lists. The Iowa Court of Appeals has
repeatedly upheld the use of voter registration lists and driver’s
license/identification lists. See State v. Washington, No. 15–1829, 2016
WL 6270269, at *11 (Iowa Ct. App. Oct. 26, 2016) (“While we agree that
the best practice would involve increasing the number of lists used in order
to reach more of the population, Washington cannot establish that the use
of the lists of registered voters and current motor vehicle operat[ors] is a
83
systematic exclusion.”); State v. Jackson, No. 09–0462, 2010 WL 624906,
at *7 (Iowa Ct. App. Feb. 24, 2010) (holding defendant failed “to prove a
systematic exclusion, as the testimony of the Black Hawk County jury
manager evidences that section 607A.22 was properly followed”); State v.
Salinas, No. 05–0772, 2006 WL 1910207, at *4 (Iowa Ct. App. July 12,
2006) (holding the defendant failed to show systematic exclusion where
jury manager used statutorily-required lists).
It appears that almost every federal circuit court has concluded that
the use of voter registration lists to select a jury pool—less than what was
done in this case—is constitutionally permissible. See United States v.
Willis, 868 F.3d 549, 555 (7th Cir. 2017) (“In this case, the defendants
cannot show that the underrepresentation of blacks in the jury pool was
due to a systematic exclusion of this group. Rather, the jury venire was
pulled from individuals registered to vote and this court has previously
upheld this methodology . . . .”); United States v. Garcia, 674 F. App’x 585,
587 (8th Cir. 2016) (“[E]thnic and racial disparities between the general
population and jury pools do not by themselves invalidate the use of voter
registration lists and cannot establish the systematic exclusion of allegedly
under-represented groups.” (quoting United States v. Greatwalker, 356
F.3d 908, 911 (8th Cir. 2004))); United States v. Hernandez-Estrada, 749
F.3d 1154, 1166 (9th Cir. 2014) (en banc) (“Hernandez has not provided
sufficient evidence ‘linking sole reliance on voter registration lists for jury
selection to current systematic exclusion of [distinctive groups] in the
[Southern District].’ ” (alterations in original) (quoting United States v.
Rodriguez-Lara, 421 F.3d 932, 945 (9th Cir. 2005), overruled on other
grounds by Hernandez-Estrada, 749 F.3d at 1157)); United States v.
Watkins, 691 F.3d 841, 850–51 (6th Cir. 2012) (“Specifically, he argues
that the practice of summoning jurors using voter registration lists
84
exclusively, rather than also drawing from driver’s-license and state-
identification lists, disfavors minorities, who tend to vote in lower
proportions than other groups. But we specifically rejected this argument
in [United States v.] Odeneal[, 517 F.3d 406 (6th Cir. 2008)].”); United
States v. Smith, 247 F. App’x 321, 323 n.2 (3d Cir. 2007) (“We have
affirmed the validity of jury selection procedures using voter registration
and motor vehicle records as procedures ‘constituted using facially neutral
criteria [that] allow no opportunity for subjective or racially motivated
judgments.’ ” (alteration in original) (quoting Ramseur v. Beyer, 983 F.2d
1215, 1233 (3d Cir. 1992))); United States v. Orange, 447 F.3d 792, 800
(10th Cir. 2006) (“The circuits are ‘in complete agreement that neither the
Act nor the Constitution require that a supplemental source of names be
added to voter lists simply because an identifiable group votes in a
proportion lower than the rest of the population.’ ” (quoting United States
v. Test, 550 F.2d 577, 586 n.8 (10th Cir. 1976))); United States v. Joost,
No. 95–2031, 1996 WL 480215, at *8 (1st Cir. Aug. 7, 1996) (“As for
Duren’s third prong, the requirement that systematic exclusion be shown,
we have already ruled out reliance simpliciter on voter registration lists.”);
Schanbarger v. Macy, 77 F.3d 1424, 1424 (2d Cir. 1996) (per curiam) (“[A]
jury venire drawn from voter registration lists violates neither the Sixth
Amendment’s fair cross-section requirement nor the Fifth Amendment’s
guarantee of Equal Protection.”); United States v. Cecil, 836 F.2d 1431,
1454 (4th Cir. 1988) (“We are reasonably confident that every jury plan in
this Circuit, as well as those in most of the other Circuits, provides for the
use of voter registration lists in the jury selection process . . . [which] have
been approved, as satisfying the fair cross-section requirement of the
statute and the Constitution.”).
85
On this record, it is unclear to me why remand is necessary or
proper. In Plain, we remanded the case to develop the record where the
defendant “lacked the opportunity to do so because he was not provided
access to the records to which he was entitled.” 898 N.W.2d at 829. There
is no such claim here.
Nothing in Lilly or the majority opinion in this case purports to
change the showing required to establish “systematic exclusion” under the
Sixth Amendment. Indeed, the majority agrees Veal’s claim fails as a
matter of law:
Veal did not attempt to meet the third prong of
Duren/Plain other than by arguing that systematic exclusion
can be inferred from the 2016 aggregated data. As we
explained in Lilly, that is not enough. The defendant must
identify some practice or combination of practices that led to
the underrepresentation, and it must be something other than
the “laundry list” the Supreme Court declined to condemn in
Berghuis.”
(Citation omitted.)
I can find no authority to remand a case to allow the defendant an
opportunity to relitigate a claim that everyone agrees he lost as a matter
of law.
III.
For these reasons, and for the reasons set forth in my separate
opinion in Lilly, I concur in part and dissent in part.
Waterman and Christensen, JJ., join this concurrence in part and
dissent in part.