Did the state postconviction court violate Batson-and-its-progeny

QUESTIONS PRESENTED In Flowers v. Mississippi, 139 S. Ct. 2228, 2243 (2019), this Court affirmed that its “precedents allow criminal defendants...to present a variety of evidence to support a claim” pursuant to Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), “that a prosecutor’s peremptory strikes were made on the basis of race’—including “statistical evidence about the prosecutor’s use of peremptory strikes against black prospective jurors as compared to white prospective jurors in the case...; relevant history of the State’s peremptory strikes in past cases;” and “other relevant circumstances that bear upon the issue of racial discrimination.” In the state post-conviction proceedings below, Mr. Dickerson presented statistical evidence establishing that the Solicitor in his South Carolina capital trial had used her strikes to exclude Black jurors both historically and in his case. He submitted trial records from cases illustrating the Solicitor’s discrimination, and a “desktop guide” that gave prosecutors examples of ostensibly “race neutral” reasons that would insulate a strike from a Batson challenge—reasons that the Solicitor used in his and other cases. The state courts declined to consider this evidence. The questions presented are: 1. Did the state postconviction court violate Batson and its progeny by refusing to consider evidence that this Court’s precedent expressly permits? 2. Did the state postconviction court err in denying Mr. Dickerson’s Batson challenge when the jurors’ voir dire responses and a comparative juror analysis either fail to support, or expressly rebut, the Solicitor’s proffered “race neutral” reasons? 3. Did Mr. Dickerson’s trial counsel provide ineffective assistance in failing to subject the Solicitor’s proffered “race neutral” reasons to the methodologies for identifying pretext recognized by this Court’s precedent in, e.g., Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. 231 (2005)?