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Appellate panel hears challenge to prosecutor’s strike of lone Black juror in Coleman case
Summary
At oral argument in State v. James Patrick Coleman (No. 606836), defense counsel argued the trial court erred under GR 37 by allowing the prosecutor to remove the only Black juror for an impermissible reason; the state said the record shows the strike was based on juror 27’s family drug history and equivocation about impartiality. The court took the matter under advisement and adjourned.
Lisa Elner, attorney for appellant James Patrick Coleman, told an appellate panel that the trial court violated GR 37 by allowing prosecutors to strike "the only black man in the jury pool for impermissible reasons." Elner said the court must apply de novo review and ask whether an objective observer could view race as a factor in the prosecutor’s use of a peremptory challenge.
The argument turned on the scope of GR 37 and the "objective-observer" standard. Elner cited recent appellate precedent she described in argument as requiring heightened scrutiny when prosecutors rely on a juror’s connections to people "stopped, arrested, or convicted of a crime." She argued that, under that line of cases, a prosecutor’s later explanation that the move was not race-based cannot cure a presumptively invalid strike.
Haley Jeskewil, counsel for the State of Washington, responded that the record shows the prosecutor was motivated by juror 27’s family experience with drugs in a possession-with-intent case and by the juror’s equivocal response when asked whether he could be fair. "This was a drug case," Jeskewil said, and juror 27 "was the only one who indicated ... I don't know if I can be fair." The state told the panel that other jurors who described drug-related experiences explicitly said they could be fair, and that the prosecutor asked follow-up questions in a systematic way across the panel.
Panel members pressed both sides on a close factual question: whether an objective observer, seeing that the only Black juror had been targeted early in voir dire and later discussed in more detail, could view race as a factor. One judge asked counsel to clarify "the difference between being able to hear the evidence fairly and impartially versus being able to decide a case fairly and impartially," a point Elner used to distinguish equivocal answers about how a juror might experience evidence from a categorical refusal to be fair.
Counsel debated procedural details that bear on the GR 37 analysis: whether the prosecutor’s for-cause motion was made before certain facts about law-enforcement contact emerged, whether other jurors with similar experiences were treated differently, and whether timing and follow-up questioning changed the prosecutor’s stated reason. The defense emphasized that GR 37 requires the court to consider whether non–people-of-color who answered similarly were treated the same; the state emphasized that the record shows the prosecutor’s primary concern was the juror’s familial exposure to drugs and the juror’s inability to give a definitive answer on impartiality.
The panel did not issue a ruling at the hearing. The court said it would consider this and multiple other matters in chambers without further oral argument and then adjourned. The appellate court’s decision will resolve whether the peremptory strike of juror 27 violated GR 37’s protections against race-conditioned jury selection.
