Snyder v. Louisiana

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Authorship: Lyle Denniston maintains this page.

1 Briefs and Documents
- 1.1 Merits stage
2 Pre-Argument Articles
3 Oral Argument Recap
4 Opinion Analysis
5 Links and further information

[edit] Briefs and Documents

Docket: 06-10119

Argument Transcript

REVERSED and REMANDED in an opinion by Justice Alito.

[edit] Merits stage

Brief for Petitioner Allen Snyder

Brief for Respondent State of Louisiana

Reply Brief for Petitioner Allen Snyder

[edit] Pre-Argument Articles

Snyder v. Louisiana is a death-row case about race as an issue in jury selection. But it looms larger as a potentially significant inquiry into the use of implied racial imagery to influence not only who sits on a jury but how to turn that jury toward a guilty verdict. It has the special feature of a prosecutor turning the race-tinged legal woes of O.J. Simpson into a trial tactic.

[edit] Background

In criminal trials, prosecutors and defense lawyers for generations have attempted to create images, in words, to try to influence jurors. It is widely acknowledged that, if lawyers are good at crafting such word pictures, they can shape the outcome of a trial. The task may be easier if the attorney, on either side, can summon up an allusion that is so familiar that it has become a cultural icon; that can make the intended message simpler, and the effect potentially greater.

A constitutional problem may arise, however, if the allusion seeks to play upon presumed or actual juror prejudice. The questions the Supreme Court will be attempting to answer, in Snyder v. Louisiana, are whether a prosecutor crosses the constitutional line when he invokes the familiar image of O.J. Simpson, as one who “got away with it,” in a case where an all-white jury is trying a black man for murder.

The Snyder case has been to the Supreme Court once before. On June 13, 2005, the Supreme Court sent the case (04-6530) back to the Louisiana Supreme Court to examine it further in the wake of a decision two weeks earlier in Miller-El v. Dretke, another death row case. The Justices ruled in Miller-El that it was unconstitutional for a prosecutor to strike 10 of 11 qualified black jurors from sitting in that murder trial. Comparisons of the black jurors who got struck with the whites who did not reinforced the finding, the Court said.

In the course of that ruling, the Court remarked: “For more than a century, this Court consistently has reaffirmed that racial discrimination by the state in jury selection offends the Equal Protection Clause.” The difficulty, however, the Court added, is the practical one of “ferreting out discrimination” because selections are “discretionary by nature,” and might be shaped by “myriad legitimate influences.”

It is a problem the Court has in each case now that is a sequel to Batson v. Kentucky, the 1986 decision in which the Court first ruled that race-based uses of peremptory challenges in criminal trials were unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause.

In the case of Allen Snyder, of Kenner, La., the Louisiana Supreme Court – in its initial decision in 1999 and in a ruling in September 2006 after the remand from the U.S. Supreme Court – found no Batson violation in the assembly of an all-white jury to try a black suspect on a charge of murdering the male companion of his estranged wife in 1995.

After Snyder had been charged with murder, the prosecutor, before the trial began, made a number of public comments comparing the case to the O.J. Simpson case, in which the former pro athlete was charged with murdering his wife and a friend of hers; Simpson was acquitted. Snyder’s defense lawyer filed a motion to bar such comparisons in future comments by the prosecutor, and was turned down, but the prosecutor said he would not mention the Simpson case during the trial itself – a vow he reportedly broke.

In the jury selection process, there were nine blacks in a pool of 85 eligible potential jurors. The state removed four for stated causes, and the remaining five by peremptory challenge – with the defense objecting to some of those strikes on Batson grounds. One of the results: an all-white jury.

The O.J. Simpson case was not mentioned by the prosecutor during the guilt phase. In closing argument during the death-sentencing phase, the prosecutor said this case “made me think of something. Made me think of another case, the most famous murder case in the last, in probably recorded history, that all of you are aware of... " At that point, the defense objected, unsuccessfully. The prosecutor went on: “The most famous murder case, and all of you have heard about it, happened in California, very, very, very similar to this case. The perpetrator in that case claimed that he was going to kill himself as he drove in a Ford Bronco and kept the police off of him, and you know what, he got away with it.” The jury returned with a sentence of death.

A new trial motion, arguing that the prosecutor had used his strikes to get an all-white jury that would be receptive to the O.J. Simpson argument, failed. The case went up to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which rejected the Batson challenge. The 5-2 majority said it was not “firmly convinced” that the O.J. Simpson case had influenced the jury. It found that the strikes of the black jurors were justified by valid reasons. On remand from the U.S. Supreme Court, the state Supreme Court in another divided opinion dismissed the argument about the O.J. Simpson comparison, saying that the prosecutor had not referred to Snyder’s or Simpson’s race in his remarks. Besides, the majority said, Snyder’s lawyer had opened the issue by saying in closing argument that Snyder had been suicidal when police arrived to arrest him. The comparison to the O.J. Simpson case, the majority added, was only a reference to the fact that that case, too, was about domestic violence.

[edit] Petition for Certiorari

In Snyder’s new appeal, he argued that the state Supreme Court had been “recalcitrant” in failing to “engage in the exacting scrutiny” that Miller-El requires. The state Court, it contended, should have examined sensitively both circumstantial and direct evidence of prosecutors’ racial intent in the strikes, and in addressing the jury at sentencing, as well as in framing the case before trial as one in which race would be a factor. The ruling on remand was little more than a slightly expanded review of the challenges that race had infected the case, the appeal asserted.

Besides the O.J. Simpson angle, the petition asked the Court to rule that the state Supreme Court had wrongly imported into a case on direct appeal a standard of review fashioned for federal habeas, and that the state Supreme Court should have considered the strikes of black jurors to which defense counsel had not made an objection at the time.

The Court granted review on June 25. The case is set for one-hour of argument on Tuesday, Dec. 4.

[edit] Merits Briefs

Snyder’s brief on the merits suggests, in early passages, that his trial occurred “in a community familiar with racial divisions and appeals to race.” It noted the political popularity of a Ku Klux Klan wizard in the area as proof. This, obviously, was part of a tactic of immersing the case in a racial context in order to strengthen the specific claims about how those issues played out during the trial. The brief goes on to examine, in some detail, the process of the five peremptory strikes of blacks – part of the tactic of using specifics to make the broader point that Miller-El requires a detailed examination into the jury-selection process. The brief uses the O.J. Simpson references to make the summary point that the comments “were indicative of his [the prosecutor’s] intent in striking all of the black prospective jurors.” Each part of the case, with its supposed racial overtones – from pre-trial through sentencing – is tied together in the brief as a continuum.

That brief reflects the lesson that defense lawyers are taking from the Court’s several decisions, including Miller-El, mandating a close examination of specific facts about the conduct of trials where race may be made or was made into an issue. Instead of making sweeping legal arguments, the focus is on factual detail to create a mosaic. The overwhelming bulk of the Snyder brief is a reiteration of the record. There is little legal rhetoric, but the brief does close with a comment from Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in last Term’s school desegregation cases, saying that “The enduring hope is that race should not matter; the reality is that too often it does.”

The state’s merits brief compresses the issue into a test of whether the state court was wrong in accepting race-neutral reasons given by the prosecutor for the five peremptory challenges of blacks, and puts some focus on the fact that the defense objected to only three of those strikes. Those challenges, it suggests, should simply be ignored by the Justices, because “Batson requires a timely objection” before prosecutors must explain strikes.

After the opening, the state brief discusses the virtue of federal court deference to state trial courts, and then contrasts its view of the Louisiana Supreme Court’s ruling regarding Snyder’s trial with the facts in the trial of Miller-El, which the state calls a case of “unique factors.” Much of the remainder of the brief, like Snyder’s, goes deeply into detail about the facts of this trial.

When the state brief reaches the O.J. Simpson point, it seeks to separate the remark made during sentencing from the earlier, jury-selection process. It argues: “When the trial judge ruled on the Batson objections the O.J. Simpson comment could not have been considered because it had not yet been made. Therefore, because it could not have been considered by the trial court it should not be considered by a reviewing court.” The Supreme Court itself, the state asserts, should not consider that in evaluating the Batson claim.

The state, though, does suggest that there were, indeed, other, non-racial parallels between the charges against Simpson and the facts against Snyder.

The Constitution Project, a progressive advocacy group, filed an amicus brief supporting Snyder, largely seeking to enhance the significance of the O.J. Simpson issue in the case. Referring to data beyond the Snyder case about “the racially charged response to the O.J. Simpson [not guilty] verdict,” this brief argued that this response led the prosecutor to inject race into Snyder’s case “”without expressly mentioning it….Racial messages are more often implicit than explicit.”

There is also an amicus brief from nine ministers of black churches in the community where Snyder was tried, arguing that Jefferson Parish has repeatedly witnessed the use of race in criminal trials, including the exclusion of black jurors, along with “troubling racial attitudes” among whites in the Parish.

[edit] Analysis

If the Court continues its recent pattern in Batson sequels, it will focus on details to see what they show on their own, and whether they contribute to a totality that indicates that race was, indeed, a part of the prosecution’s strategy – and its success. The O.J. Simpson factor in the case could turn out to be an important detail, but it is not guaranteed to be the most significant factor in the Justices’ analysis. For one thing, it is unclear whether they would be willing to tie the pre-trial statements and the closing argument statement about the O.J. Simpson case as related to each other, as Snyder suggests, or as isolated circumstances, as the state argues. It seems entirely unlikely that the Court will take the state’s suggestion to leave it out of account altogether. The Court will be looking for evidence that the trial genuinely was influenced by a climate of racial intolerance in the community, and the O.J. Simpson references might be a part of that. But possibly more important would be the arguments of the nine black ministers, as amici, relating their community-specific observations about racial attitudes.

If the Court spends much time on the O.J. Simpson references, it is possible that the final decision in the case could make some quite significant comments on the role that implicit comments might play in exciting racial intolerance in the courtroom.

[edit] Oral Argument Recap

The following originally appeared on SCOTUSblog.

The case of Snyder v. Louisiana (06-10119) may live in history as a case about using O.J. Simpson’s legal troubles as a way to “play the race card” before an all-white jury trying a black man. The Supreme Court, in a hearing on Tuesday, showed some fascination with that part of the case. But the decision that ultimately emerges from the Court may also bring a call for trial judges to take a more active role in monitoring the race factor in criminal trials. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, in fact, implied that there may be a price to pay if judges do not take the hint: they won’t get the usual respect and deference, in appeals, for their conduct of trials.

Much of the Court’s one-hour hearing was occupied with an exhaustive examination of the details of jury selection in Snyder’s trial for murder in Jefferson Parish. That was to be expected: this is a “Batson case.” Since ruling in Batson v. Kentucky in 1986, curbing prosecutors’ use of peremptory challenges to keep blacks off of juries, the sequels in the Court to that decision have been focused much more on the specifics of each trial under review, with not much further development of the controlling legal principles. So, once again, the Justices spent a great deal of time on why some individuals were struck while others were not, and on how to judge whether, in each instance, race was or could have been the key factor. Much of that, of course, focuses on the actions of prosecutors and defense lawyers. This is the Court’s way of judging the totality of racial overtones in a trial to check for Batson violations.

But, this time, the trial judge’s conduct became a focus — favorably, near the beginning, as Justice Antonin Scalia made the customary point about how the judges on the scene “are in a much better position” than an appellate court to judge the process of jury selection and the conduct of counsel on both sides. But the mood changed, beginning with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s remark that the trial judge in Snyder’s case “was passive throughout.” That prompted Snyder’s lawyer, Stephen B. Bright of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, to recount an incident at the trial: The defense had struck one juror for cause, and the judge allowed it, to which the prosecutor said to the judge: “Are you crazy?” To which the judge reportedly said, simply, “No,” and the trial simply went on from there.

Bright went on to criticize the judge further, noting that he disposed of challenges for cause with four- or five-word responses. “You don’t have the assurance that this judge was involved,” he said. It was a smart tactical remark, since the state, in defending against Snyder’s appeal, put heavy stress on the Court’s usual willingness to defer to trial judges on the handling of their courtrooms, and the need especially to defer to trial judges’ observation of the demeanor of prosecutors in jury selection in capital cases.

Later, when assistant state attorney general Terry M. Boudreaux of Gretna, La., was at the podium, Justice David H. Souter returned to the judge’s conduct. “There is nothing in the record to suggest the trial court was very critical of the prosecutors” for their alleged use of racial implications, Souter said. He noted that one of the reasons the trial judge had given for finding no error in the prosecutor’s talk about the O.J. Simpson case to the all-white jury was that the prosecutor “had not mentioned” either Simpson’s or Snyder’s race. “That is not a critical mind at work,” Souter dryly remarked, to which Boudreaux softly replied: “I would suppose not.”

Boudreaux was nearly finished when Justice Kennedy, who up to then had not said a word, sat forward in his seat after the state’s lawyer brought up Kennedy’s opinion last Term in Uttecht v. Brown (06-413). Repeating the state’s citation in its brief to that opinion, mandating broad deference to trial judges in capital cases up on habeas review, Boudreaux was closing his argument for a call for that principle in Snyder’s case. Kennedy noted that Uttecht was a habeas case, and asked whether the deference the Court had required in that case should apply to a Batson case, “where we have the sensitive issue of racial discrimination. “Because of our concerns in the Batson area,” Kennedy commented, “do you think we’re entitled to have a different standard of deference for the trial court?” It sounded more like a suggestion than a question.

The “O.J. Simpson factor” in the case — so central to popular interest in the Snyder case — was actually slow to come into the oral argument. It did not arise until well into Bright’s presentation. Justice John Paul Stevens brought it up, asking whether the prosecutor’s pre-trial and trial argument references to O.J. Simpson having “gotten away with” a crime was “relevant at all to what’s before us” in this jury selection case. Bright said it was, noting that the prosecutor had broken a promise not to bring it up at the trial. Justice Scalia then jumped in, asking “What does that have to do with anything — the prosecutor broke his promise?” Bright said it had to do with the prosecutor’s credibility on whether he was trying to turn the case into one about race. The Simpson case, the lawyer said, was “the most racially polarizing case” in the Nation.

Justice Scalia rushed, perhaps a bit too hastily, to the defense of the prosecutor. The O.J. Simpson case was brought up at the trial by the prosecutor, Scalia suggested, because of factual parallels with the Snyder case. In the Simpson case, Scalia recalled (assuming a verdict that did not occur), “he kills his wife, with a knife, and then feigns mental illness in his great escapade.”

Justice Souter was the strongest supporter of the notion that the Court had to consider the O.J. Simpson remarks as factors in “trying to determine what went on” at Snyder’s trial with the race issue. He asked Boudreaux whether, if a white defendant had been on trial instead of Snyder, who is black, “would the O.J. Simpson matter have been mentioned?” Boudreaux ventured that it would have. “I find it unlikely,” Souter commented.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., followed up on Souter’s question, asking the state’s lawyer: “Even if you are correct that there was a neutral explanation given [for the Simpson remark], do you think the prosecutor would have made the analogy if a black juror had been on the jury?” Boudreaux said “I think he could have.”

Although Justice Scalia and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., had gone the furthest of any members of the Court to find valid explanations for the way the jury selection went in Snyder’s case, it was not clear, as the hearing went on, that they were doing anything more than trying to draw out Bright’s argument on the claimed racial character of the trial. It was not apparent, by the time the hearing concluded, that Bright’s adversary, Boudreaux, had carried the day with any member of the Court.

[edit] Opinion Analysis

Lyle Denniston originally wrote the following analysis for SCOTUSblog.

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 on Wednesday that the trial judge in a Louisiana murder case — one that involved a prosecutor’s use of the O.J. Simpson case to try to help win a death sentence against a black man — was wrong in rejecting a challenge to the denial of a seat to one black juror. The strike of two black jurors by prosecutors led to the seating of an all-white jury trying Allen Snyder of Kenner, La. The Court’s decision was confined to the rejection of one of the two blacks on the panel.

The ruling came in the case of Snyder v. Louisiana (06-10119). Although the case had gained prominence because it appeared to be a test of the use of racially charged comments by prosecutors to win either convictions or death sentences when blacks were on trial, that aspect did not figure in the final ruling. In announcing its decision in the case, the Court did not mention the episodes in which the prosecutor referred to this as his ”O.J. Simpson case” to draw a parallel to Simpson’s prosecution, suggesting that there a black man had gotten by with murder.

Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., wrote the majority opinion. Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, dissented. This was the only ruling on the merits Wednesday.

The Court’s decision appeared to be a straightforward application of the 1986 decision in Batson v. Kentucky and sequels to it — decisions that barred race-based uses of automatic (”peremptory”) challenges in criminal trials. Justice Alito’s opinion, while reciting familiar legal principles, focused his opinion primarily upon the specific facts in prosecutor’s removal of a black college student — first because, prosecutors said, he appeared nervous, and second because, they argued, the young man had obligations as a student teacher. Neither of those reasons justified the strike of that juror, Jeffrey Brooks, the Court concluded. Defense lawyers objected to that strike, as they did to the removal of another black juror, Elaine Scott. Justice Alito said that, because it was “clear error” for the trial judge to reject the Batson challenge to Brooks’ strike, “we have no need” to rule on Ms Scott’s removal and the defense objection to it.

Justice Thomas, in dissent, contended that “none of the evidence in the record as to jurors Jeffrey Brooks and Elaine Scott demonstrates that the trial court clearly erred in finding that they were not stricken on the basis of race.”

In Snyder’s trial, there was a jury pool of 85, including nine blacks. The prosecution struck all nine — four for stated causes, and five with peremptory challenges. Only two of the peremptories were at issue in Wednesday’s ruling.