Gray v. Brady

Filing 920100125

Opinion

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var WPFootnote1 = 'Of the District of New Hampshire, sitting by designation.\
'

var WPFootnote2 = 'Section 2254(d)(1) provides that a federal court cannot issue\
a writ of habeas relief from a state-court conviction “with respect\
to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court\
proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim resulted in a\
decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable\
application of, clearly established federal law, as determined by\
the Supreme Court of the United States” (formatting altered). \
'

var WPFootnote3 = 'We acknowledge that defense counsel characterized the rest of\
the originally constituted panel--aside from the four jurors\
identified as African-American jurors and the one juror identified\
as Hispanic--as “nine white jurors.” But, as defense counsel’s\
initial misidentification of the Hispanic juror as African-American\
suggests, visual observation alone is not always the most accurate\
way to discern race. Cf. United States v. Ochoa-Vasquez, 428 F.3d\
1015, 1043 (11th Cir. 2005) (noting, in a case with an anonymous\
jury, that the court had properly rejected a Batson challenge\
founded on the alleged striking of Hispanic jurors, because “one\
could not identify Hispanic jurors in this particular case simply\
by their appearance,” as shown by defense counsel’s\
misidentification of several Hispanic jurors as white).\
'

var WPFootnote4 = 'At oral argument, Gray made much of the fact that, after the\
prosecutor’s challenges to the two African-American jurors had been\
questioned, he asked to withdraw the only peremptory challenge he\
had yet to make against a white juror. But the prosecutor did so\
in advancing a race-neutral reason for striking one of the African-American jurors, i.e., that juror, like the white juror, lived in\
the neighborhood where the alleged crimes had occurred. We see the\
prosecutor’s request to withdraw his challenge to the white juror,\
then, as an effort to show the bona fides of his challenge to the\
African-American juror, rather than as any revelation that the\
prosecutor was trying to seat as many white jurors as possible.\
'

var WPFootnote5 = 'Gray offers the hypothetical case of a prosecutor who\
“stand[s] before a trial judge and state[s], ‘I am now going to\
eliminate any juror who belongs to a minority group because I favor\
the selection of white majority jurors to the jury.’” But the\
record contains no such statement here nor, as just discussed,\
evidence sufficient to make out a prima facie case of intentional\
discrimination against any discrete group but African-Americans.\
'

var WPFootnote6 = 'We do not doubt, of course, that either African-Americans or\
Hispanics constitute a “cognizable group” for Batson purposes. But,\
as Gray himself argues, that is a different question from whether\
“minorities” constitute such a group. Cf. Green v. Travis, 414\
F.3d 288, 296-98 (2d Cir. 2005) (ruling that state court\
unreasonably rejected a defendant’s Batson challenge to the\
exclusion of Black and Hispanic jurors as a challenge to the\
exclusion of “minority” jurors).\
'

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