Snyder v. Louisiana, Decision--Reversing LA Supreme Court

As I predicted in my summary of the case, the US Supreme Court reversed the decision of the LA Supreme Court, which permitted a prosecutor to strike all five prospective African-American jurors from a jury that eventually sentenced African-American Allen Snyder to death. What was suprising to me, however, were not the dissents of Thomas and Scalia--their opinions show that they really are not very committed to protecting the rights of criminal defendants--but rather the fact that Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts voted to reverse the LA Supreme Court, with Alito writing the opinion. The issue had to do, as I indicated in my summary, with the propriety of excluding one prospective juror, Mr. Brooks, by a peremptory (i.e., not for cause) challenge.

This decision is an intensively fact-based decision. It combs the trial transcript to discover if the two reasons accepted by the trial court for eliminating Mr. Brooks, an African-American, from the jury pool, were able to survive a so-called Batson challenge. The Batson case provided a three-step process for a trial court to use in adjudicating a claim that a peremptory challenge was based on race:

"First, a defendant must make a prima facie showing that a peremptory challenge has been exercised on the basis of race[; s]econd, if that showing has been made, the prosecution must offer a race-neutral basis for striking the juror in question[; and t]hird, in light of the parties' submissions, the trial court must determine whether the defendant has shown purposeful discrimination.’"

Because the Court's decision rested on the language of the trial transcript, I will give some of that language below.

Why Was Mr. Brooks Dismissed?

When the prosecutor moved to strike Mr. Brooks, a student teacher completing his last semseter of preparation for teaching, from the jury panel, he gave the following explanation:

"I thought about it last night. Number 1, the main reason is that he looked very nervous to me throughout the questioning. Number 2, he's one of the fellows that came up at the beginning [of voir dire] and said he was going to miss class. He's a student teacher. My main concern is for that reason, that being that he might, to go home quickly, come back with guilty of a lesser verdict so there wouldn't be a penalty phase. Those are my two reasons.”

The US Supreme Court took each explanation in turn. With respect to the first, Justice Alito noted that it generally is true that you can't judge "demeanor" from a "cold transcript," and that deference is usually given to the trial court's determination on this issue. But...

"Here, however, the record does not show that the trial judge actually made a determination concerning Mr. Brooks' demeanor. The trial judge was given two explanations for the strike. Rather than making a specific finding on the record concerning Mr. Brooks' demeanor, the trial judge simply allowed the challenge without explanation. It is possible that the judge did not have any impression one way or the other concerning Mr. Brooks' demeanor. Mr. Brooks was not challenged until the day after he was questioned, and by that time dozens of other jurors had been questioned. Thus, the trial judge may not have recalled Mr. Brooks' demeanor. Or, the trial judge may have found it unnecessary to consider Mr. Brooks' demeanor, instead basing his ruling completely on the second proffered justification for the strike. For these reasons, we cannot presume that the trial judge credited the prosecutor's assertion that Mr. Brooks was nervous."

[A troublesome question for me arises. If the trial judge had concluded that Mr. Brooks was nervous and therefore be excluded from the jury, would that be a ruling that would likely be reversed on appeal?] So, this was not a convincing reason to eliminate Mr. Brooks from the jury panel. How about the second proffered reason? At the beginning of jury selection, when the trial court asked prospective jury members whether jury service would pose an extreme hardship, Mr. Brooks was 1 of more than 50 prospective jurors who expressed this concern. Here was the actual exchange in court:

"MR. JEFFREY BROOKS: ... I'm a student at Southern University, New Orleans. This is my last semester. My major requires me to student teach, and today I've already missed a half a day. That is part of my-it's required for me to graduate this semester.

“[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: Mr. Brooks, if you-how many days would you miss if you were sequestered on this jury? Do you teach every day?

“MR. JEFFREY BROOKS: Five days a week.

“[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: Five days a week.

“MR. JEFFREY BROOKS: And it's 8:30 through 3:00.

“[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: If you missed this week, is there any way that you could make it up this semester?

“MR. JEFFREY BROOKS: Well, the first two weeks I observe, the remaining I begin teaching, so there is something I'm missing right now that will better me towards my teaching career.

“[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: Is there any way that you could make up the observed observation [sic] that you're missing today, at another time?

“MR. JEFFREY BROOKS: It may be possible, I'm not sure.

“[DEFENSE COUNSEL]: Okay. So that-

“THE COURT: Is there anyone we could call, like a Dean or anything, that we could speak to?

“MR. JEFFREY BROOKS: Actually, I spoke to my Dean, Doctor Tillman, who's at the university probably right now.

“THE COURT: All right.

“MR. JEFFREY BROOKS: Would you like to speak to him?

“THE COURT: Yeah.

“MR. JEFFREY BROOKS: I don't have his card on me.

“THE COURT: Why don't you give [a law clerk] his number, give [a law clerk] his name and we'll call him and we'll see what we can do.

“(MR. JEFFREY BROOKS LEFT THE BENCH).” App. 102-104.

Shortly thereafter, the court again spoke with Mr. Brooks:

“THE LAW CLERK: Jeffrey Brooks, the requirement for his teaching is a three hundred clock hour observation. Doctor Tillman at Southern University said that as long as it's just this week, he doesn't see that it would cause a problem with Mr. Brooks completing his observation time within this semester.

“(MR. BROOKS APPROACHED THE BENCH)

“THE COURT: We talked to Doctor Tillman and he says he doesn't see a problem as long as it's just this week, you know, he'll work with you on it. Okay?

“MR. JEFFREY BROOKS: Okay.

As Justice Alito says, "The prosecutor's second proffered reason for striking Mr. Brooks must be evaluated in light of these circumstances." But the prosecutor's explanation seemed very hollow to a majority of the Justices:

"The prosecutor claimed to be apprehensive that Mr. Brooks, in order to minimize the student-teaching hours missed during jury service, might have been motivated to find petitioner guilty, not of first-degree murder, but of a lesser included offense because this would obviate the need for a penalty phase proceeding. But this scenario was highly speculative. Even if Mr. Brooks had favored a quick resolution, that would not have necessarily led him to reject a finding of first-degree murder. If the majority of jurors had initially favored a finding of first-degree murder, Mr. Brooks' purported inclination might have led him to agree in order to speed the deliberations. Only if all or most of the other jurors had favored the lesser verdict would Mr. Brooks have been in a position to shorten the trial by favoring such a verdict."

The Court then concluded that there was sufficient evidence to conclude that Mr. Brooks' exclusion from the jury was motivated in substantial part by discriminatory intent.

The case will go back to Louisiana, of course, and Mr. Snyder will have to have a new trial. It may be that within a few years he will be back on death row. But at least, for now, he is not, and that is a victory for him...

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