I saw that the CCA granted a PDR on its own motion this week, for a case called Hassan v. State, 14-10-00067-CR. Anyone know what the ground of error was on that one?

Reading over the lower opinion, it sounds interesting. The COA remanded for a Batson hearing on a municipal court case five years after the trial. Unsurprisingly, the prosecutor couldn't remember why he'd struck the people in question, so the COA held he didn't rebut the defendant's claims and reversed the case.

I'm lucky to remember what my mailing address was from five years ago, much less why I struck the third juror on the second row... I guess at some point we're all going to have to start writing voir dire memoranda to put in the file for all strike reasons. Of course, that's fraught with OTHER dangers.

I read that case a while ago. Perhaps appropriately, I don't remember it very well.

11-1682 HASSAN, ADBIHAKIM HARRIS FAILING TO STOP
Is using two out of three peremptory strikes against two of five members of a group in a strike zone of twelve a "suspiciously large" repetition of strikes or an "unexpectedly high" rate of challenges sufficient to establish a presumption of purposeful discrimination?

http://www.cca.courts.state.tx.us/issues/ISSUES.pdf

Thanks for the follow up to the original post!

And I think the answer to that question is unknown, not merely unknowable.

Presumably using one strike against a minority would not give rise to any presumption (even if it is one out of three). So, which of the two was improperly deprived of his right to serve (and which of them would get seated on the jury, if one were improperly struck)? The smaller the pool and number of available strikes, the more difficult to prove a Batson violation, right?

Thanks for the follow-up! I chatted with John at the SPA about it too. Sounds like it'll be an interesting case.

Is this one of those "you know you're an appellate nerd when" situations? When you start hunting down cases that aren't yours just because they sound cool?