Remand to the district court was required for an evidentiary hearing to determine whether there was a Batson violation where the prosecutor challenged four out of seven Hispanic jurors and the only two African American jurors. The prosecutors challenges raised an inference as to race, and his explanation that the challenges were based on the jurors questionnaires was not persuasive, particularly since the trial court never actually looked at the questionnaires to verify the claim. Neither was his claim that he did not know the ethnicity of the jurors when evaluating their responses credible since their surnames were on the questionnaires.
Case Summaries