Defense Strikes Four of Five Non-Whites From Jury Panel, Gets a New Trial Because State’s Objections Were Unfounded.

State v. Campbell, Minn.Ct.App., 9/29/2009.  Mr. Campbell berated his twelve year old son when his son took a call strike three.  He then turned his attention to the team’s coach and the team’s assistant coach (who was also his wife), during which he hurled several racially offensive remarks at them.  He also threatened the two coaches.  That got him charged with terroristic threats.

During jury selection, Mr. Campbell struck four of the five non-Caucasian members of the jury pool.  (Mr. Campbell is white; the victims are Latino.)  Two strikes were of Latinos, one was Hmong, and the fourth was African American.  The trial judge thought that the state might want to object to this, so it did.  This use of peremptory challenges supports a conclusion that the state presented a prima facie case of racial discrimination  Only one of those strikes – M.T. -  was still viable on appeal, a strike of one of the Latinos.

The trial judge found that Mr. Campbell had presented a race neutral explanation for his strike of M.T.  The trial court then concluded that this explanation was pre-textual and that the strike was racially motivated.  The trial court gave seven reasons for reaching this conclusion.

The most compelling of these, according to the appellate court, was that this strike was part of a consistent pattern of striking non-white jurors.  True enough, but at the same time the court had not found that any of the other strikes of non-white jurors was racially motivated.  This pattern of striking non-whites did not, therefore, support a pattern of discrimination.  The trial court also gave as a reason that it was “essential …  that the public have confidence in the integrity of the criminal justice system in order to preserve community peace in trials involving race-related crimes.”  That may be, but “the community” has no standing to assert a Batson challenge; only litigants and prospective jurors can do that.  So, Mr. Campbell gets a new trial because in Minnesota an erroneous ruling on a Batson challenge is not subject to harmless error analysis.  Cf., Rivera v. Illinois, 129 S. Ct. 1446 (2009).