Alexander v. Royce

Background

Devin Alexander, proceeding without a lawyer, filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his New York state-court conviction and sentence. He was convicted of second-degree murder, second-degree attempted murder, and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. He was sentenced to 50 years to life.

Alexander raised two claims:

1. The trial court improperly denied his objection under Batson v. Kentucky after the prosecution used peremptory strikes against five Black prospective jurors without being required to give race-neutral explanations. 2. The prosecution relied on testimony it knew or should have known was false and failed to investigate that testimony.

Exhaustion of the false-testimony claim

Before a federal court generally may review a state prisoner’s federal claim, the prisoner must give the state courts a fair opportunity to consider it. This requirement is called exhaustion.

The court found that Alexander’s false-testimony claim was unexhausted. On direct appeal, the state appellate court had treated the claim as based on facts outside the trial record and therefore not reviewable on direct appeal. The federal court noted that Alexander could present the claim in a state motion under New York Criminal Procedure Law § 440.10, which allows a motion to vacate a judgment based on evidence requiring consideration outside the trial record.

The court declined to stay the case because Alexander had not shown good cause for failing to exhaust the claim in state court. It also declined to decide the claim’s merits because the evidence supporting it had not been presented to the federal court. The court therefore deleted the false-testimony claim from the petition and dismissed that claim without prejudice.

Batson claim

The court concluded that Alexander had fully exhausted his Batson claim. Batson prohibits purposeful racial discrimination in the use of peremptory challenges during jury selection. The analysis generally requires a defendant first to show facts supporting an inference of discrimination. If that initial showing is made, the prosecution must give race-neutral reasons for the strikes, and the trial court then decides whether purposeful discrimination occurred.

At trial, Alexander’s lawyer stated that five challenged jurors were Black and young and that nothing indicated they would be biased. The lawyer confirmed that the objection was based on the number of challenged jurors because they belonged to the same racial group. The trial court denied the objection without requiring the prosecution to give race-neutral reasons.

The federal court held that the state appellate court’s conclusion—that Alexander had not made the required initial showing of discrimination—was neither contrary to clearly established Supreme Court law nor an unreasonable application of that law. The record did not show the racial composition of the jury pool, the number of total strikes in a way that established disproportion, or an effort to exclude all or nearly all Black jurors. The record showed that the prosecution had used 13 peremptory challenges, five against Black jurors, and that four Black jurors had already been selected. Alexander therefore had not established a pattern from which purposeful discrimination could be inferred.

Disposition

Judge Lewis J. Liman denied Alexander’s habeas relief on the Batson claim. The court dismissed the false-testimony claim without prejudice, denied the petition on the remaining claim, directed the clerk to close the case, and certified that any appeal would not be taken in good faith. The court denied permission to appeal without paying court fees.