Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Court of Appeals ruled today that a Miller County Circuit judge did not err when he allowed the prosecutor in a robbery trial to strike a potential juror who was black, despite the prosecutor’s admission that race was a factor in his decision.

The Court of Appeals upheld the aggravated robbery conviction of Kenneth Riley, who was sentenced as a habitual offender to 80 years in prison in the Oct. 1, 2007, robbery of an E-Z Mart convenience store in Texarkana.

Riley, who is black, was tried before an all-white jury. He argued on appeal that the prosecutor showed discriminatory intent when he struck a potential juror who was black, Brittany Owens, in violation of Riley’s rights under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

When questioned by the judge, the prosecutor admitted that the potential juror’s race was a factor in his decision to exclude her, the appeals court said in its decision today.

However, the court noted that the prosecutor also told the judge he excluded the juror because she had not completed a juror questionnaire; was young and soft-spoken; lacked maturity; was not in school or employed; was not forthcoming with her answers; acted as though she did not want to be there; and was the same age as participants in the robbery.

“On this record, we conclude that the trial court’s decision that the prosecutor would have stricken Owens regardless of her race is not clearly against the preponderance of the evidence,” Judge Courtney Hudson Henry wrote in the Court of Appeals’ opinion.