New Trial for Convicted Robber After Prosecutors Dismissed Juror Because of Race
A split Pennsylvania Superior Court has ruled that prosecutors from the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office violated the Constitution by removing a black member of the jury pool in a robbery case based on race.
January 04, 2018 at 02:51 PM
4 minute read
A split Pennsylvania Superior Court has ruled that prosecutors from the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office violated the Constitution by removing a black member of the jury pool in a robbery case based on race.
At the same time, the court held that prosecutors' use of a list including ”the races and genders of prospective jurors on a peremptory strike sheet, while ill-advised, does not per se violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
The ruling came in response to defendant Derrick Edwards' appeal. In 2014, Edwards, who is black, was convicted on charges stemming from multiple armed robberies and was sentenced to 22 to 44 years in prison. That conviction was overturned Jan. 2 by the Superior Court.
In his appeal, Edwards challenged his sentence based on the U.S. Supreme Court's 1986 analysis of a criminal defendant's due process rights in Batson v. Kentucky, where the high court held jurors could not be excused because of race.
Although the prosecutors' listing of demographic information doesn't violate the Constitution under Batson, Superior Court Judge Judith Ference Olson wrote in the court's majority opinion that Edwards “is African-American and the commonwealth struck seven African-American prospective jurors.”
“Furthermore, although listing the races and gender of prospective jurors on the peremptory strike sheet did not qualify as a per se Batson violation, it is a relevant circumstance that raised an inference that the prosecutor struck the jurors based on their race,” Olson said.
She was joined in the majority by Senior Judge John L. Musmanno.
Olson said that prosecutors offered acceptable race-neutral explanations for striking other black jurors from the jury pool—like in the instance of one woman whose ex-husband was a police officer—but in the case of Juror No. 67, discriminatory motives were apparent.
Prosecutors argued that 67 looked “cavalier” throughout jury selection and did not want to participate in the case. But Olson was not persuaded.
“The commonwealth's race-neutral explanation for striking Juror 67 was wholly underpersuasive in that the commonwealth relied on her supposedly inattentive posture to conclude that she would not discharge her duties as a juror in a fair and impartial manner,” Olson said.
However, Judge Victor P. Stabile disagreed.
In his dissenting opinion, Stabile said prosecutors had no hand in creating the strike sheet and the majority failed to explain how the demographic information was misused.
“I do not understand how the majority can impute discriminatory intent to the commonwealth from the content of this document when the commonwealth had no say or involvement in its drafting,” Stabile said. “Further, while the majority finds the trial court's practice of notating the race and gender on the strike sheet ill-advised and inappropriate, but acknowledges that the inclusion of race and gender on the sheet is not discriminatory per se.”
He added, “I take issue with the majority's conclusions on several levels. Most important, as is common, reliance upon statistics can be misleading. Here, the majority's conclusion that 'the probability of striking no Caucasians and striking at least seven of 13 African-Americans by random chance is extremely small,' … completely omits the reasons for which these potential jurors were stricken, thus leaving a false impression as to why these strikes were exercised.”
Hugh J. Burns Jr., who argued for the District Attorney's Office on appeal, did not respond to a request for comment. Damian M. Sammons of Legal Defense Counsel represents Edwards and also did not respond to a request for comment.
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