State v. Chapman
| Decision Date | 04 October 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. 24191,24191 |
| Citation | 454 S.E.2d 317,317 S.C. 302 |
| Court | South Carolina Supreme Court |
| Parties | The STATE, Respondent, v. Jeffrey Allen CHAPMAN, Appellant. . Heard |
Asst. Appellate Defender M. Anne Pearce, of S.C. Office of Appellate Defense, Columbia, for appellant.
Atty. Gen. T. Travis Medlock, Chief Deputy Atty. Gen. Donald J. Zalenka, and Asst. Attys. Gen. Wilbur E. Johnson, and Rakale Buchanan Smith, Columbia, and Solicitor Thomas E. Pope, York, for respondent.
Jeffrey Allen Chapman was convicted of third degree criminal sexual conduct and sentenced to ten years imprisonment. We remand pursuant to State v. Jones, 293 S.C. 54, 358 S.E.2d 701 (1987).
During jury selection, the State exercised peremptory challenges against four white male jurors. In response, Chapman, who is also a white male, made a Batson 1 motion and attempted to establish a prima facie violation:
[Defense counsel]: I would make a motion under the Batson versus Kentucky with regard to the strikes that were made by the Solicitor's office. I believe that the Solicitor's office struck all the white males that were, virtually all the white males, defense and the State, and your Honor, I would submit at this time that we had the right to have a Batson inquiry as to why they stuck [sic] white males. All the while [sic] males were similarly situated to terms age to our client and we would ask the Court to inquire.
[The Court]: How about that Solicitor?
[Solicitor]: Your Honor, I would request to be a little specific. There were six white males outside the jury. I don't exactly know.
[The Court]: Yes, sir, I agree.
[Defense counsel]: Your Honor, if I might. There were four excused all the exemplary challenges and struck the following jurors number 72, number 2, number 96, and number 43.
[The Court]: Yes, sir.
[Defense counsel]: All of those being white males.
[The Court]: Didn't you strike a white male too?
[Defense counsel]: Your Honor, we're not talking, we struck, we struck as Your Honor can see from the panel, white females, black females, white males.
[The Court]: Struck mainly white females. No, sir, I don't think there is any Batson issue here really.
[Defense counsel]: I understand Your Honor that the ruling, I think what we have gender based discrimination in the use of exemplary strikes as they came down. We would have taken those jurors.
[The Court]: You have it on the record. All right. Good. Thank you.
The solicitor exercised four peremptory strikes, striking four white males. Six white males served on the jury.
Did the trial court err in denying Chapman's request for a Batson hearing?
In Batson v. Kentucky, supra, the United States Supreme Court held that a state denies a black defendant equal protection when it challenges potential black jurors solely due to their race or on the assumption that black jurors as a group will be unable to impartially consider the state's case against a black defendant. Batson required a defendant to initially show that he is a member of a racial group capable of being singled out for differential treatment. It further held that 1) a defendant must establish a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination. A prima facie case is established by a showing by the defendant that he is a member of a cognizable racial group and that the prosecutor had exercised peremptory challenges to remove members of the defendant's race from the venire panel; 2) a defendant is entitled to rely on the fact that peremptory challenges constitute a jury selection practice that permits those to discriminate who are of a mind to discriminate; and 3) a defendant must show that facts and relevant circumstances raise an inference that the prosecutor used peremptory strikes to exclude venirepersons on the account of their race.
The United States Supreme Court subsequently found in Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400, 111 S.Ct. 1364, 113 L.Ed.2d 411 (1991), that Batson was designed to serve multiple ends, only one of which was to protect individual defendants from discrimination in the selection of jurors. The Powers Court recognized that Batson also provided each individual juror equal protection rights not to be excluded from the jury. Therefore, the Court reasoned that in a trial of a white criminal defendant, a prosecutor is prohibited from excluding black jurors based on race.
The Batson rationale was further extended in Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., 500 U.S. 614, 111 S.Ct. 2077, 114 L.Ed.2d 660 (1991), so that in a civil case, private litigants could not exercise their peremptory strikes in a racially discriminatory manner. Edmonson presented the United States Supreme Court its first opportunity to rule upon discriminatory peremptory challenges exercised by a party other than a prosecutor. The Edmonson Court found that a private party's exercise of peremptory challenges constituted state action.
The Supreme Court next held that a criminal defendant's use of peremptory challenges was state action. Therefore, a criminal defendant's racially discriminatory exercise of peremptory challenges inflicts the harms addressed by Batson. Georgia v. McCollum, 505 U.S. 42, 112 S.Ct. 2348, 120 L.Ed.2d 33 (1992). Individual jurors rights to nondiscriminatory jury selection were further strengthened by the Supreme Courts decision in J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., 511 U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 1419, 128 L.Ed.2d 89 (1994). J.E.B. found that discrimination in jury selection, whether based on race or on gender, causes harm to the litigants, the community, and the individual jurors who are wrongfully excluded from participation in the judicial process. Consequently, gender, like race, was an unconstitutional proxy for juror competence and...
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