Com. v. Hyatt
Citation | 409 Mass. 689,568 N.E.2d 1148 |
Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. Dwayne HYATT. |
Decision Date | 03 April 1991 |
Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts |
Carol A. Donovan, Randolph, Committee for Public Counsel Services, for defendant.
Judith A. Cowin, Asst. Dist. Atty., for Com.
Before LIACOS, C.J., and ABRAMS, NOLAN, O'CONNOR and GREANEY, JJ.
The defendant appeals his convictions of aggravated rape and armed robbery. He seeks a new trial on the grounds that he was erroneously denied a peremptory challenge of a juror; that the prosecutor was allowed an improper challenge; and that certain expert testimony was erroneously admitted in evidence. The Appeals Court affirmed the convictions, 29 Mass.App.Ct. 140, 557 N.E.2d 1172 (1990), and we allowed the defendant's application for further appellate review. We now reverse the convictions and order a new trial.
The defendant is a black man. The victim was a twenty-one year old white woman. There was only one black person in the venire, a woman in her twenties. During the empanelment, the prosecutor challenged the black juror, but the judge disallowed the challenge. When the panel, not yet finalized, consisted of twelve women, including the black juror, and two men, the defendant challenged eight women and one man. The prosecutor objected on the ground that the defendant "challenged each of the young women in the panel except for the black woman, and this appears to be discrimination based on age, sex, and that combined with the age of the victim in this case is what I object to." The judge allowed the defendant's challenges, saying,
After the replacement jurors were seated, the panel consisted of seven men and seven women. Of these, the defendant challenged two women, both of whom were white and in their twenties. Left on the panel were the seven men, the black woman in her twenties, and four considerably older women. The prosecutor objected on the ground that the challenged jurors were both young, white women. The judge said that the defendant was exercising challenges in violation of Commonwealth v. Soares, 377 Mass. 461, 490, 387 N.E.2d 499, cert. denied, 444 U.S. 881, 100 S.Ct. 170, 62 L.Ed.2d 110 (1979). Defense counsel said that he challenged the two women because one was a secretary in the House of Representatives and the other lived near the scene of the crime. The judge was not satisfied with that explanation. The judge ruled that the defendant could exercise one, but not both, of the contested challenges, and the defendant did so. Then, at a side bar conference, the judge articulated his reason for having denied one of the defendant's peremptory challenges as follows:
The Appeals Court reasoned that Commonwealth v. Hyatt, 29 Mass.App.Ct. 140, 142, 557 N.E.2d 1172 (1990). The Appeals Court concluded that, since the challenges were, at least in part, based on membership in a discrete group identified in art. 1...
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