Pruitt v. State, No. 2007-KA-00499-SCT (Miss. 4/10/2008)

• Decision Date: 10 April 2008
• Docket Number: No. 2007-KA-00499-SCT.,2007-KA-00499-SCT.
• Parties: JOE SOLOMON PRUITT v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

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JOE SOLOMON PRUITT v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI.

No. 2007-KA-00499-SCT.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

April 10, 2008.

COURT FROM WHICH APPEALED: MONROE COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT, TRIAL JUDGE: HON. PAUL S. FUNDERBURK, DATE OF JUDGMENT: 03/07/2007.

DISPOSITION: AFFIRMED.

ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT: OFFICE OF INDIGENT APPEALS, BY: BENJAMIN A. SUBER.

ATTORNEY FOR APPELLEE: OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, BY: LA DONNA C. HOLLAND.

DISTRICT ATTORNEY: JOHN R. YOUNG.

BEFORE WALLER, P.J., CARLSON AND LAMAR, JJ.

WALLER, PRESIDING JUSTICE, FOR THE COURT:

¶ 1. Joe Solomon Pruitt appeals from his conviction on a charge of armed robbery in the Circuit Court of Monroe County Mississippi, alleging a Batson violation in the selection of the jury. Finding the trial court correctly found no prima facie showing of purposeful discrimination, we affirm.

FACTS

¶ 2. Loomis Fargo fired Alonzo Jones from employment as a delivery driver. Jones recruited his friend Joe Solomon Pruitt and James Person to rob the Renasant Bank in Smithville, Mississippi, one of the banks on his former route. Jones knew the layout of the bank, the Loomis delivery schedule, and that two women staffed the bank during the day. Approximately a week after Jones was fired, Pruitt, Jones, and Person drove from Memphis, Tennessee, to the Renasant Bank in Smithville on the Loomis delivery day. Pruitt and Person, masked and gloved, entered the bank and forced the two employees to place the bank's cash into a backpack and a sack. Pruitt was armed with a handgun. Pruitt and Person left the bank and entered the car, where Jones waited. As they were leaving, a dye pack placed in Person's sack exploded, filling the car with smoke. He tossed the bag out the car window and they fled back toward Memphis.

¶ 3. At a four-way stop near Fulton, Mississippi, a sheriff's deputy saw the bank robbers and followed them as they entered Highway 78. A state trooper spotted them next on the highway and crossed the median to tail them along with the deputy. Jones exited the highway at the next exit. He discovered the exit had no outlet, and he stopped the car beside a wooded area. The three left the car and fled into the woods. After wandering around, they came across a shed next to a white house, where they hid and slept. The following day, they tried to leave in a second car, which became stuck in a ditch. They returned to the white house and asked the resident for assistance. Her son was attempting to free the vehicle when law enforcement officers arrived at the house and surrounded it. The bank robbers surrendered. Some of the stolen cash was found hidden inside a couch in the house where the robbers were apprehended.

DISCUSSION

¶ 4. Pruitt argues one issue on appeal.¹

WHETHER THE TRIAL COURT ERRED IN ACCEPTING THE RACE-NEUTRAL REASONS GIVEN BY THE STATE AFTER A BATSON OBJECTION REGARDING THREE JURORS.

¶ 5. Pruitt's only issue raised on appeal is a challenge to the sufficiency of the state's race-neutral reasons for peremptorily striking three African-American members of the venire. After the circuit court struck some members of the venire for cause and held a brief discussion about the number of peremptory strikes available to each side, the court stated the following: "If you will, I will be in chambers. As soon as you get a jury selected, I want to — I want to seat the jury promptly at twelve o'clock, noon." The court then recessed.

¶ 6. After the recess, the court came back on the record with the question, "All right. Do we have a jury yet?" Pruitt immediately raised a Batson challenge, stating that the state had struck three African-Americans on the first panel of the venire: jurors 1, 2 and 14. The state responded by stating that it tendered the panel with four African-Americans among the twelve jurors and volunteering its reasons for the peremptory strikes. The circuit court ruled:

[T]hat the . . . there is not a — or was not a pattern of discrimination by the State in Striking Jurors 1, 2, and 14. . . . There is no pattern of discrimination established to even require the State to give race-neutral reasons. However, they have given what the Court considers race-neutral reasons for these strikes. The Court does not see these reasons as pre-textual, not race-based. . . . So the defendant's motion is overruled.

The petit jury consisted of five white males, two white females, one African-American male, three African-American females, and one female juror whose race was not identified for the record. Two white males served as alternates.

¶ 7. This Court reviews a trial court's ruling on a Batson challenge with great deference and will not overturn the trial court's ruling unless it is clearly erroneous or against the overwhelming weight of the evidence. Flowers v. State, 947 So. 2d 910, 917 (Miss. 2007). See also Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 98, 106 S. Ct. 1712, 1724, 90 L. Ed. 2d 69, 88, n.21 (1986); Chisolm v. State, 529 So. 2d 630, 633 (Miss. 1988); Lockett v. State, 517 So. 2d 1346, 1352 (Miss. 1987). When addressing a Batson challenge, a trial court employs a three-step procedure: (1) the defendant must make out a prima facie case by showing that the totality of the relevant facts gives rise to an inference of discriminatory purpose; (2) once the defendant has made out a prima facie case, the burden shifts to the state to explain adequately the racial exclusion by offering permissible, race-neutral justifications for the strikes; and (3) if a race-neutral explanation is tendered, the trial court must then decide whether the opponent of the strike has proved purposeful racial discrimination. Johnson v. California, 545 U.S. 162, 168, 125 S. Ct. 2410, 2416, 162 L. Ed. 2d 129, 138 (2005).

¶ 8. Pruitt argues the state's reasons for striking the three jurors bear two marks indicating they were pretexts for racial discrimination: The state failed to voir dire these jurors on the reasons offered for their being stricken, and there is no record supporting the stated reason. See Manning v. State, 765 So. 2d 516, 519 (Miss. 2000) (Manning III). The state responds by arguing the reasons are immaterial because the trial court ruled Pruitt failed to make a prima facie showing of purposeful discrimination. In the alternative, the state argues the reasons offered by the prosecutors are race-neutral and demonstrate no pretext for racial discrimination. We find the state's primary argument meritorious.

¶ 9. This Court previously has endorsed the two-judgment procedure followed in this case. See Brawner v. State, 872 So. 2d 1, 10 (Miss. 2004) Pruitt cites Snow v. State, 800 So. 2d 472, 478 (Miss. 2001), for the principle that the initial burden on a defendant to demonstrate a prima facie case of discrimination is mooted when the trial court requires the state to offer race-neutral reasons for its strikes. The state accurately responds that the trial court in Snow did not rule on whether Snow had met his burden of demonstrating a prima facie case of discrimination. Snow, 800 So. 2d at 479. However, we must acknowledge that we have previously held the state's act of volunteering race-neutral reasons for peremptorily striking members of the venire, without being ordered to do so by the trial court and before the trial judge ruled on whether a defendant raising a Batson challenge met her burden of demonstrating a prima facie showing of discrimination, rendered the prima facie question moot. Cf. Walker v. State, 863 So. 2d 1, 28 (Miss. 2003) ("[T]he question of whether Walker made out a prima facie case is moot because the state was ordered to give reasons for its strikes without [a determination of whether a prima facie case has been made by Walker]. It has long been the law that when the prosecution states its reasons for exercising its peremptory strikes either when ordered to do so without a finding of a prima facie case or voluntarily, the reasons can be reviewed on appeal."); Stevens v. State, 806 So. 2d 1031, 1046 (Miss. 2001) ("When the State gives its reasons for exercising peremptory challenges without being required to do so or because the trial court orders it without finding a prima facie case, the requirement of making a prima facie [sic] is moot."). See also Hughes v. State, 735 So. 2d 238, 250 (Miss. 1999); Manning v. State, 735 So. 2d 323, 339 (Miss. 1999) (Manning II); Manning v. State, 726 So. 2d 1152, 1183 (Miss. 1998) (Manning I), (overruled on other grounds by Weatherspoon v. State, 732 So. 2d 158, 162 (Miss. 1999)); Woodward v. State, 726 So. 2d 524, 530 (Miss. 1997); Davis v. State, 660 So. 2d 1228, 1240 (Miss. 1995); Mack v. State, 650 So. 2d 1289, 1298 (Miss. 1994). Since this is an incomplete statement of the law, we must first clarify when a defendant's initial burden under Batson becomes moot.

¶ 10. The cases listed above rely upon the United States Supreme Court's plurality opinion in Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S. 352, 111 S.Ct. 1859, 114 L. Ed.2d 395 (1991), as authority for determining when the requirement to make a prima facie showing of purposeful discrimination under Batson becomes moot. It stated the rule as follows:

The prosecutor defended his use of peremptory strikes without any prompting or inquiry from the trial court. As a result, the trial court had no occasion to rule that petitioner had or had not made a prima facie showing of intentional discrimination. This departure from the normal course of proceeding need not concern us. We explained in the context of employment discrimination litigation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that "where the defendant has done everything that would be required of him if the plaintiff had properly made out a prima facie case, whether the plaintiff really did so is no longer relevant." United States Postal Service Bd. of Governors v. Aikens, 460 U.S. 711, 715, 75 L. Ed. 2d 403, 103 S. Ct. 1478 (1983). The same principle applies under Batson. Once a prosecutor has offered a...