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Defense asks Supreme Court to scrutinize peremptory strike after juror said ‘police don’t always tell the truth’
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Summary
At oral argument in Commonwealth v. Almeda, defense counsel Robert Shaw told the state Supreme Court that a prosecutor’s peremptory strike of prospective juror 101 rested on a mischaracterization of the juror’s answers and risked masking a race-based exclusion; the Commonwealth defended the judge’s assessment of credibility.
At oral argument in Commonwealth v. Aaron Almeda, defense attorney Robert Shaw told the Supreme Court that a prosecutor’s peremptory strike of prospective juror 101 was legally inadequate because it rested on a mischaracterization of the juror’s answers and did not meet the test of being an “adequate and genuine” race-neutral explanation.
Shaw said the juror had stated — accurately, in Shaw’s view — that “police don’t always tell the truth” and that his awareness came from news reports and other community information, not personal experience. Shaw argued that the prosecutor mischaracterized that answer as coming from a TV show and that the strike therefore lacked specificity as required by Batson-related standards. “He was asked a question about evaluating the credibility of police officers,” Shaw told the court, “and in response he made the factually true statement that police don't always tell the truth.”
The defense framed the issue as a Batson/Williams problem: Shaw asked the court to adopt a rule making source-based explanations (that a juror formed a view from news or community experience) insufficient, standing alone, as a race-neutral basis for exclusion when the challenged juror’s expressed skepticism reflected longstanding, documented disparities in how communities of color view the criminal legal system. Shaw said, “if a juror has views that are more critical and scrutinizing of the legal system, that shouldn't be a basis ... to exclude them.”
Chief Justice Budd and other justices probed the line between a juror’s stated belief and the source of that belief. One justice asked how a judge could “divorce the source from the belief,” noting that a juror who said his views came from what he had heard about other cases did not have access to trial evidence. Shaw responded that community knowledge and news reports are common bases for juror views and that such bases alone do not demonstrate inability to be fair.
Commonwealth attorney Ian MacLean defended the trial judge’s rulings, emphasizing the judge’s discretion in assessing the genuineness of a proffered reason. MacLean told the court that adequacy requires the reason be clear and personal to the juror and that genuineness is a credibility determination the trial judge is best positioned to make: “the trial judge sees the body language, the demeanor. They're seeing it all,” he said.
The parties also debated how Williams — a case the defense invoked to contend that life experiences do not justify exclusion for cause — applies to peremptory strikes. Shaw argued that excluding jurors because they express skepticism rooted in community experiences can function as a proxy for race; MacLean replied that a party may permissibly exercise a peremptory challenge where the juror’s belief is personal and not based on group affiliation.
The record shows the trial judge allowed the prosecutor’s peremptory strike and relied in part on observations about the juror’s hesitation and demeanor. Shaw urged the Supreme Court to find that the prosecutor’s stated reason was neither adequate nor genuine on this record; the Commonwealth urged deference to the trial judge’s credibility calls.
The Supreme Court’s decision will resolve whether the trial-court credibility determinations and the prosecutor’s explanation meet the governing Batson-related standards in this record.
