Tony Phillips v. United States

In Snyder v. Louisiana, 552 U.S. 472, 477-79 (2008), this Court made clear that when a prosecutor provides a demeanor-based explanation for the removal of a potential juror during jury selection, “the trial court must evaluate . . . whether the juror’s demeanor can credibly be said to have exhibited the basis for the strike attributed to the juror by the prosecutor." Despite the clarity of this Court’s instruction in Snyder, there is a well developed circuit split as to whether this Court meant what it said. While five circuits have held that Snyder requires trial judges to make findings regarding a juror’s demeanor, two circuits have held that Snyder imposes no such requirement. This split is a subset of an even larger circuit split as to whether trial judges are required, as a general matter, to make findings at the third step of the three-step Batson analysis. The question presented is: Whether a trial court at step three of Batson must make its own finding as to whether a juror’s demeanor can credibly be said to have exhibited the basis for a strike attributed to the juror by the prosecutor.