Currie v. McDowell

After the district court denied Aldridge Currie's claims for habeas relief, it issued a certificate of appealability on his Batson v. Kentucky claim. The prosecutor in Currie's case, David Brown, has a history of unconstitutional race-based peremptory strikes. The court previously held that Brown violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause when he struck three African-American women from the jury of petitioner Aldridge Currie’s first trial. On retrial, the trial judge found that Brown had violated Batson again by striking three African-American prospective jurors. This case stems from Currie’s second retrial, in which Brown was the prosecutor again and where Brown removed one African American juror by using a peremptory strike. The court concluded that “race was a substantial motivating factor” for his strike of the juror at issue here based on Brown’s history of Batson violations and pretextual reasons in this case. The California Court of Appeal’s rejection of Currie’s Batson claim was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts, as it largely ignored the similar extent of drug use in the juror’s social circles and those of the empaneled jurors, and it uncritically accepted Brown’s other stated reasons. Therefore, the district court erred in rejecting Currie's habeas petition. The court reversed and remanded with instructions to issue a conditional writ of habeas corpus. View "Currie v. McDowell" on Justia Law