Dwandarrius Jamar Robinson v. Arizona
DueProcess Punishment
Must a court reviewing a Batson challenge consider both a substantial disparate impact on minority jurors and the cumulative nature of the State's misstatements of fact?
QUESTION PRESENTED Dwandarrius Robinson is a black man who was sentenced to death by a jury that the State scrubbed clean of all but one minority juror. The State used its peremptory strikes to improperly remove four minority jurors—two who were Black, one who was Hispanic, and one who was Native American. When Mr. Robinson challenged these strikes pursuant to Batson, the State justified all four of the racially motivated strikes with misstatements of the record. On direct appeal, the Supreme Court of Arizona chose to disregard the significant disparate impact the State’s peremptory strikes had on prospective minority jurors. The court also minimized the State’s misstatements of the record made in support of those strikes. The court did not consider the cumulative nature of these misstatements when determining whether the State was motivated in substantial part by racially discriminatory intent. Must a court reviewing a Batson challenge consider both a substantial disparate impact on minority jurors and the cumulative nature of the State’s misstatements of fact? i