State v. Holmes

Citations

• 334 Conn. 202

Syllabus

Convicted, after a jury trial, of the crimes of felony murder, home invasion, conspiracy to commit home invasion and criminal possession of a fire- arm, the defendant appealed to the Appellate Court, claiming that the trial court had improperly overruled his objection to the prosecutor's use of a peremptory challenge to excuse a prospective, African-American juror, W. During voir dire, the prosecutor questioned W, who previously had disclosed that he was employed as a social worker and performed volunteer work directly with prison inmates, regarding his interactions with the police and his opinions of the criminal justice system. In response, W indicated that he sometimes feared being stopped by the police while driving, he had family members who had been convicted of crimes and incarcerated, and he believed that certain groups of individ- uals are disproportionately convicted of crimes and receive dispropor- tionate sentences. W further expressed that his concerns were largely informed by his life experiences as an African-American. In objecting to the prosecutor's peremptory challenge, defense counsel argued that it was in violation of the United States Supreme Court's decision in Batson v. Kentucky (476 U.S. 79), which prohibits a party from challeng- ing potential jurors solely on account of their race. The prosecutor explained that the basis for the peremptory challenge was W's stated distrust of law enforcement and his concern about the fairness of the criminal justice system, as borne out by his life experiences. The prosecu- tor also noted that the peremptory challenge was not based on W's race but, rather, related only to the particular viewpoints that W had expressed. After the trial court overruled the defendant's Batson chal- lenge, it excused W from the venire. The Appellate Court affirmed the trial court's judgment and, relying on State v. King (249 Conn. 645), concluded that the prosecutor's explanation of W's distrust of the police 334 Conn. 202 DECE