Trial Court Erred in Granting State’s Batson Challenge Based on Gender.

State v. Seaver, Minn.Ct.App., 9/24/2012.  Ms. Seaver’s former boyfriend foolishly divulged to her that he was holding twenty-five thousand dollars.  Ms. Seaver collected her current boyfriend and two other friends about this treasure and the four set off to steal it.  The plan had a few bugs in it so ultimately the state charged Ms. Seaver with aiding and abetting first degree burglary, second degree assault, and attempted first degree aggravated robbery.  During jury selection Ms. Seaver used four of her five peremptory strikes to remove four male jurors.  The state made a Batson challenge to those strikes.  The trial court granted two of the four challenges but denied the other two:

I do find that there has been a Batson violation. The question in this case is how to address it. I am going to do it in this way, and this is completely arbitrary, in a way: I am going to allow two of the strikes, [B] and [V], and I’m doing it for this reason: I think that [B] being a victim is a more legitimate reason. The reasons given for the others are weak.

I will just note that I always make an estimate as to who the parties are going to strike, and I wrote down that the defense would likely strike [V]. I don’t think I believed that he was going to be struck for the reasons stated, but for different ones, but I anticipated that he would be struck. And the other people I had written down that he would strike were not men. I can understand why the defense might not want a person who is obviously well-educated and would be a leader on the jury and probably could well be the Foreperson. The reasons given I don’t necessarily buy, but I think there are other reasons.

So for that reason, I will allow the defense’s strike of [V] and [B], but since I found Batson violations, I will not allow the other two [ of [H] and [M].

The court of appeals goes through the Batson drill, beginning with whether the state proved a prima facie case of gender discrimination.  The defense struck four of the seven men on the panel so this was enough for the court of appeals to find that the state passed this part of the test.

Now, Ms. Seaver had to come up with a gender neutral reason for the strikes.  For H, she said that H had not been very forthcoming in his answers and alleged that he had told another juror that he would lie and just go along with what others said.  For M, Ms. Seaver said that M’s ex-wife had custody of his kids.  This was a concern because Ms. Seaver dropped her kids off with a friend or relative on her way to rob her former boyfriend.  The court of appeals concludes that these reasons were good enough and did not reveal any inherent discriminatory intent.

On to the last step:  what was the real reason for the strikes.  Because they’re guys?  The court of appeals concludes that the state did not prove that Ms. Seaver’s stated gender neutral reasons were pretextual.  Further, the erroneous denial of a defendant’s peremptory strike entitles her to a new trial.

The court also said that the trial court had improperly prevented Ms. Seaver from explaining her motivation behind her conduct.  She had wanted to explain that her conduct was motivated by fear for her children’s safety, who were being cared for by the girlfriend of one of the accomplices.  Lastly, the court instructed the trial court to give an accomplice testimony instruction if either of two accomplices testified at the new trial.