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Taylor v. State1/25/2000
her constitutional right to be tried by a jury of her peers has been violated. Batson requires a defendant, in order to make out a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination in the selection of a petit jury, to establish (1) that he is a member of a cognizable racial group; (2) that the prosecutor has exercised peremptory challenges to remove from the venire members of the defendant's race; (3) that these facts and any other relevant circumstances raise an inference that the prosecutor used that practice to exclude the veniremen from the petit jury on account of their race. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 96 (1986). Once this prima facie showing has been made, the burden shifts to the State to come forward with a neutral explanation for challenging black jurors. Sudduth v. State, 562 So. 2d 67, 71 (Miss. 1990). A prima facie case was never made. Nevertheless, the State provided the trial court with neutral explanations for the challenges. The record revealed that one potential African-American juror was excluded due to a pending criminal indictment and the other was excluded because she was Taylor's next door neighbor. Clearly, these reasons can be categorized as neutral explanations.
. Taylor argues that it is untenable that she be tried by a jury without having a member of her own race on the jury. This cornerstone of Taylor's proposition rests upon a shaky foundation. "The mere fact that a jury is white does not violate Batson; rather it is the racially discriminatory exercise of peremptory challenges to strike black jurors from the jury that violates the Batson rule." Sudduth, 562 So. 2d at 71. The Batson decision recognized that it would be impossible to require proportional representation on a petit jury in view of the heterogeneous nature of our society. Batson, 476 U.S. at 85, n.6. Hence, Taylor's assertion fails as her supporting argument clearly contradicts authoritative case law.
IX. THE TRIAL COURT COMMITTED PLAIN ERROR IN ALLOWING THE INTRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE OVER THE OBJECTION OF DEFENSE COUNSEL.
. Taylor continues her trend of submitting categorical allegations of error at the trial level to this Court without offering any citation to the record in her brief where one might pinpoint evidence of these errors. Taylor contends that the trial court violated the "rule of completeness" by allowing documentary evidence into the record. The trial court's rulings on such matters are presumed to be correct and the appellant has the burden to show a reversible error arose from the ruling. Dillion v. State, 641 So. 2d 1223, 1226 (Miss. 1994). After reviewing the record ourselves, we agree with the State that the only language closely resembling such an objection is as follows:
MR. NEELY: Your Honor, we have an objection. We believe this is extremely misleading to the jury due to the fact, sir, again, that's why we were objecting on the context of these particular documents. Sir, we're going through volumes and volumes of documents that have all kinds of people's signatures on them. The only people that we're singling out on these are Beverly Jean Taylor. We believe that the jury should be able to see as a whole these documents and look at them and see so that they may see Mrs. Taylor may be one signature out of five or one signature out of ten. Just to highlight a particular document, sir, and jump 15 or 16 more down the line and to pick Mrs. Taylor's signature out is very misleading to the jury and we would object, sir.
THE COURT: All right, sir. This exhibit contains all of the receipts. They are in numerical order. They show whose initials are on them. They will be able to review all of this exhibit in its entirety and you will get t
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