Nation’s high court declines Lewiston man’s appeal

LEWISTON — The nation’s highest court will not take up the appeals of a local man’s two felony convictions on weapons charges from a 2018 trial.

Malik Hollis Androscoggin County Jail

The U.S. Supreme Court was asked in July to hear claims that the 14th Amendment rights of Malik B. Hollis, 26, were violated during jury selection when a prosecutor successfully struck the only juror of color from serving in a peremptory challenge.

The court put the matter on its August docket, but denied last week Hollis’ petition to have his case heard by that court.

The 14th Amendment guarantees every U.S. citizen equal protection of the laws.

Hollis is African American.

He was sentenced to three years in prison after an all-white jury convicted him on felony charges of reckless conduct with a firearm and criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon.

Hollis appealed his case to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, which affirmed the trial court conviction and sentence.

Maine’s “law court,” which hears appeals from the state’s trial courts, had affirmed the trial judge’s decision, reasoning that “the record supports the trial court’s determination that the (prosecutor) did not engage in purposeful discrimination when it peremptorily challenged the juror,” according to court records.

Hollis later appealed his case to Maine’s federal court, which concluded it could not hear the case; Hollis then appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston.

That court upheld the opinion of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

A 1986 U.S. Supreme Court landmark decision maintains that prosecutors can’t use peremptory challenges to exclude prospective trial jurors based on their race.

Assistant District Attorney Katherine Bozeman initially told the trial judge her challenge was based on the prospective juror’s education level.

Hollis’ attorney, James Howaniec of Lewiston, had argued in 2018 that then-Androscoggin County Superior Court Justice William Stokes had erred when he’d allowed Bozeman to strike a Black juror — the only person of color in the jury pool — from being empaneled on the jury in a criminal case involving Hollis and in which race was a prominent issue.

Writing for the federal appeals court in its 22-page decision, Judge Kermit V. Lipez wrote in a concurring opinion that the facts of the appeal were “concerning” and that the striking of the lone juror of color for his level of education was “troubling.”

At issue in Hollis’ federal appeal was whether the Maine Supreme Judicial Court applied the law or facts to the case unreasonably when it upheld the conviction of Hollis in its July 2018 ruling.

Lipez wrote that the case centers on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Batson v. Kentucky in which the nation’s highest court held that “the equal protection clause precludes the prosecution from using its peremptory challenges to strike ‘potential jurors solely on account of their races.’”

Racial discrimination during jury selection “not only ‘compromises the right of trial by impartial jury’ but also ‘establishes state-sponsored group stereotypes rooted in, and reflective of, historical prejudice,’” Lipez wrote of Maine’s high court’s explanation for its ruling.

In order to raise such a claim, the defendant must show that the totality of relevant facts “gives rise to an inference of discriminatory purpose,” Lipez wrote.

After the defendant has made that showing, the prosecutor must “explain adequately the racial exclusion by offering permissible race-neutral justification for the strike,” Lipez wrote.

The trial judge also must decide whether the defense attorney has “proved purposeful racial discrimination,” Lipez wrote.

In filing Hollis’ appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Howaniec wrote that the two questions Hollis is seeking to have the court answer are: whether peremptory challenges of racial minorities during jury selection in criminal trials should be subjected to a heightened judicial inquiry of strict scrutiny; and whether peremptory challenges in the jury selection process should be eliminated altogether.

In May 2016, Hollis had been involved in an altercation involving four white men outside an apartment building in Lewiston.

At the trial, one of the men said he had hit Hollis with a metal handlebar, called Hollis the “N-word” and said he was “going to f—ing kill him,” according to court documents.

Another of the men carried an aluminum baseball bat and a third man held a baton.

At some point, Hollis ran to his apartment, “returned with a gun and fired it,” according to court documents.

None of the white men were charged.

Bozeman said the juror in question had only an 11th grade education while other prospective jurors had completed the 12th grade. She later said she also based her peremptory striking of that juror on his experience with domestic violence, according to Wednesday’s filing.

The trial judge determined later that the prosecutor’s striking of the lone juror of color “was not exercised with a discriminatory intent or purpose,” but was done for “race-neutral” reasons, namely, the juror’s level of education, according to Lipez’s federal appeals court decision.

After the defendant has made that showing, the prosecutor must “explain adequately the racial exclusion by offering permissible race-neutral justification for the strike,” Lipez wrote.

The trial judge also must decide whether the defense attorney has “proved purposeful racial discrimination,” Lipez wrote.

Despite the decision not to hear Hollis’ case, Howaniec said this week that he believes his appeals have “called attention to an issue that has been plaguing the Maine court system for decades.”

He said he picked a jury recently in Androscoggin County, the same venue as the Hollis case, with two minority jurors and two jurors who had biracial children.

Howaniec said there has been progress in the four years since Hollis’ trial, though it has come in “baby steps.”

He said prosecutors have been “responsive to the issue.”

“The prosecutors have been submitting jury questionnaires that have been very sensitive to racial issues,” he said. “Obviously, that’s something that we applaud.”

Howaniec and other criminal trial attorneys have repeatedly voiced concerns about jury pools having so few minority members that they don’t reflect the racial makeup of the community.

In response to the U.S. Supreme Court decision not to take up the Hollis appeal, Bozeman said: “While the State is glad that the judicial system has yet again upheld the trial court’s decisions in this case, we are equally as disappointed that the facts continue to be lost in the rhetoric. A person was convicted of a crime for firing a gun into a crowd of people, in broad daylight, in a populated area of Lewiston, endangering not only the people involved, but the community at large. This happened near a church, near businesses, near apartment buildings filled with people that do not deserve to be casualties of unnecessary gun violence in this community. This is the behavior that demanded prosecution, and the process that Mr. Hollis received as a result of that prosecution has been upheld at every level as having been fair and just.”