After a jury convicted Michael B. Howard of the offense of possession of cocaine, the trial court sentenced Howard as a recidivist. In his only enumeration of error, Howard contests the denial of a challenge made under Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79 106 SC 1712, 90 LE2d 69 1986, in which he contested the State’s exercise of its peremptory strikes. Finding no error in the trial court’s ruling, we affirm.
After the State struck two black prospective jurors, Howard asserted a Batson challenge, alleging that the strikes were racially motivated. The prosecutor disagreed, pointing out that he did not exercise three of his six peremptory challenges, and of the three he used, only two were against black prospective jurors. After noting that the defendant had exercised 11 of 12 strikes against white prospective jurors, the trial court voiced doubt about the viability of Howard’s Batson motion, observing, “I question whether there’s a prima facie case even been made, but I’m going to let the State go ahead and put it on the record to satisfy defense counsel.” The prosecutor then explained that he struck one black panel member because she refused to continue deliberating during a previous rape trial that ended in a hung jury. As to the second prospective juror, the prosecutor explained that, during voir dire, a police sergeant advised him that this person lived in an area of “extremely high cocaine traffic” in which the police had recently instituted an on-going crack-down on illegal drugs. The prosecutor stated that during another trial involving a similar drug prosecution, he had encountered hostility from jurors living in “high cocaine traffic areas” in which police were conducting enhanced law enforcement activity. According to the prosecutor, during deliberations, one juror had insisted that police had planted cocaine on her son and another juror claimed that he had been stopped and harassed by police about cocaine. In light of his negative personal experience with the earlier drug prosecution, and since Howard was charged with cocaine possession, the prosecutor thought it unwise to seat this person as a juror on a case involving cocaine. No evidence indicated that this prospective juror lived in a predominately or exclusively black neighborhood.
