Background
Leron Porter was charged with second-degree murder and related firearms offenses in connection with the May 2011 fatal shooting of seventeen-year-old Tiphany Tallo in Providence, Rhode Island. His first trial in 2013 ended in conviction, but that judgment was vacated after a lengthy federal habeas proceeding. The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held in 2022 that the Rhode Island Supreme Court had unreasonably applied Batson v. Kentucky when it found the prosecutor’s race-explicit rationale for striking the sole African-American juror to be race-neutral — the prosecutor had openly acknowledged that the juror shared the defendant’s race and suggested that fact would make him partial to the defense.
At Porter’s second trial in the fall of 2022, Juror 90 — again the only African-American venireperson — came to sidebar and disclosed a pending DUI matter. When the prosecutor pressed further, Juror 90 admitted to a second pending DUI in a different court. The prosecutor moved to strike Juror 90 for cause, citing his lack of candor about the second case, his prior verbal confrontations with police officers as documented in police reports, and his use of heroin-dependency medication. The trial justice denied the for-cause challenge but ultimately allowed a peremptory strike, stating there were “absolute strong grounds for a peremptory without any racial undercurrent whatsoever.” A jury without any African-American members was seated, and Porter was again convicted.
On Porter’s motion for a new trial, the trial justice revisited the issue and concluded that no Batson violation had occurred, finding the prosecutor’s explanation credible and free of racial bias. The defendant timely appealed to the Rhode Island Supreme Court.
The Court’s Holding
The Rhode Island Supreme Court vacated the conviction and remanded for a new trial, holding that the trial justice failed to conduct the mandatory third step of the Batson tripartite framework. Under step three, a trial justice must make a meaningful, on-the-record credibility determination as to whether the prosecutor’s race-neutral explanation for the peremptory strike is genuine and nonpretextual. Here, the trial justice initially refused the strike, stating he did not “buy” the prosecutor’s excuse, but then reversed course after a recess without articulating any explanation for the change in his assessment of the prosecutor’s credibility, without evaluating the demeanor of the prosecutor, and without considering all circumstances bearing on discriminatory intent — including the prosecutor’s targeted mid-recess investigation into Juror 90’s background.
The Court found this omission particularly significant given the warning in Flowers v. Mississippi that disparate investigation of Black prospective jurors can arm a prosecutor with seemingly race-neutral pretexts for racially motivated strikes, and that trial courts “cannot ignore it.” The Court reinforced its prior directive from State v. Pona that trial justices must address, delineate, and explain their reasoning as to all three Batson steps on the record. Because the trial justice skipped step one, accepted step two, and then skipped step three altogether, the required analytical foundation for appellate review was absent.
The Court further held, consistent with the First Circuit’s earlier ruling in this very case, that a completed Batson violation is a structural error that defies harmless-error analysis and requires automatic reversal. The trial justice’s belated attempt to address the issue at the motion-for-new-trial stage could not cure the error once it had infected jury selection.
Key Takeaways
- Trial judges must engage in a meaningful, on-the-record analysis of all three steps of the Batson tripartite test; skipping step three — the credibility determination — is reversible error even if steps one and two are addressed.
- A trial justice who changes course on a Batson ruling must articulate reasons for the changed credibility assessment on the record; an unexplained reversal cannot support appellate affirmance.
- Disparate investigation into the background of a Black prospective juror (e.g., running records or reviewing police reports during a recess) is a circumstance courts must consider at step three, as it may reveal pretextual motive for what appears to be a race-neutral strike.
- A Batson violation is a structural error requiring automatic reversal; it cannot be cured by post-trial proceedings or subjected to harmless-error review.
- This is Porter’s second conviction vacated on Batson grounds — both times the prosecution’s peremptory strike eliminated the only African-American venireperson, resulting in an all-white jury.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces that Batson‘s promise of race-neutral jury selection depends entirely on trial judges actively enforcing all three steps of the framework — not merely going through the motions. By holding that an incomplete step-three analysis is itself reversible structural error, the Rhode Island Supreme Court signals that accepting a facially race-neutral justification at step two, without genuinely probing its credibility, will not insulate a conviction on appeal. The opinion also draws explicit attention to the under-examined tactic of disparate juror investigation, warning that selective background research on minority venirepersons can manufacture pretextual grounds for discriminatory strikes.
For practitioners, the ruling is a reminder that defense counsel should build a full record at jury selection — including documenting any mid-voir dire investigation by the prosecution — and that prosecutors and trial judges alike bear affirmative obligations to ensure that Batson‘s equal-protection guarantee is not rendered hollow by procedural shortcuts. The case’s extraordinary history — two convictions, federal habeas, First Circuit reversal, and now a second state-court vacation — illustrates the costly, years-long consequences of a flawed jury-selection process.