Court Rejects Batson Challenge Because Defense Could Not Establish Prima Facie Showing That Peremptory Strike Was Racially Motivated

State v. Wilson, Minn.S.Ct., 8/16, 2017.  A jury convicted Mr. Wilson of first degree premeditated murder on an accomplice liability theory for his involvement of Anthony Fairbanks. One of his codefendants had already been tried and convicted, about which you can read here.  On appeal Mr. Wilson raised a Batson issue and an evidentiary issue.

The court yet again rejects a Batson juror challenge.  Mr. Wilson did not survive the first requirement of establishing a valid Batson challenge, that the state had exercised a peremptory challenge against a prospective juror - identified only as "Juror 29" - on the basis of race. Here's the gist of what Juror 29 had to say during voir dire:

1. Although married to a prosecutor, Juror 29 said that he and his spouse "have their own views and that they debate about the law and the judicial system.  He said that his spouse had been involved in a trial of a Minneapolis police officer two weeks earlier and that he had been disappointed in the outcome.
2. Three years earlier a St. Paul officer pulled a gun on Juror 29 as he was sitting in his parked car preparing for a job interview. When Juror 29 explained to the officer what he was doing the officer apologized and went on his way.
3. Juror 29 said in his questionnaire that in theory the criminal justice system works fine but "not so much in practice."  He elaborated on this during questioning that “I think maybe we incarcerate more people than any other country in the world, disproportionate amount of those are African American.” Juror 29 further stated that, as a juror, “for the system to work well, it would be incumbent upon me to be . . . non-partial, not biased, to have an open mind about the evidence, both sides of the evidence and to . . . withhold any sort of opinion I had until all the evidence [has] kind of been submitted and heard.”  
4. Juror 29 stated that he did not believe that his views on the disproportionate incarceration rate Black me would not impact how he viewed a criminal case if he wee on a jury.
5. Juror 29 said that it was view that society was largely divided based on race and that it would be a "stretch to think that 12 people would be completely impartial going into a jury trial."

Justice G. Barry Anderson affirms the trial court's conclusion that Mr. Wilson had not shown that the state's peremptory challenge to Juror 29 had been racially motivated.  The Justice emphasized the "great discretion" afforded trial judges in making these determinations, and that just as it was not an abuse of discretion for the trial judge here to rejected the challenge neither would it have been an abuse of discretion had the trial court come to the opposite conclusion:

Taking these facts into consideration, and given the low bar for Wilson to establish a prima facie showing of an inference of discrimination, it likely would not have been error for the district court to conclude that Wilson had established a prima facie showing of discrimination. But neither was it error for the district court to conclude that Wilson failed to make a prima facie showing of discrimination. We must give “great deference” to the district court’s determination...

Police found the murder weapon in a storage locker rented to an alleged accomplice.  Mr. Wilson wanted to argue to the jury that drug dealers, which the accomplice apparently was, knew to keep their stash separate from their weapons so that's why the gun was in that storage locker.  Drug dealers knew this, the defense wanted to argue, because they also knew that the penalties for drug crimes where guns were involved were significantly higher.  The problem for Mr. Wilson was that he had no evidence to present in support of these assertions so when the state moved to exclude any further talk about this the trial court agreed.  The state said, and the trial judge agreed, that Mr. Wilson had no evidence that either of the accomplices to Mr. Fairbanks' death knew about the consequences that would result from keeping drugs and guns in the same place. Justice G. Barry Anderson agrees with the trial court's ruling, concluding that there was no abuse of discretion in the ruling because such evidence was irrelevant.