Crime & Federalism

U.S. v. Ochoa (here) raises a lot of interesting questions.  (It's 84 pages, so I suppose it should.)  Are anonymous juries unconstitutional?  If I were a juror, and I had to be kept anonymous from the defendant, I'd be pretty sure that he was guilty, if not dangerous.  But, that's beside the point.  Also addressed is whether a prosecutor can violate Batson when the racial composition of the venirepersons is kept confidential.  In my brief skim, the court says, No. 

That's a bit odd, since Ochoa argued that several Hispanic venirepersons were struck from the jury for racist reasons: indeed, the prosecutor did not offer a non-discriminatory reason for striking a couple of the jurors.  The case took place in freaking Miami.  Yet "[a]t all times both the government and the district court maintained that they could not determine whether the potential jurors were Hispanic simply from looking at them and hearing their voices." Maj. op. at 28.  Are you kidding me?  How can anyone take seriously that someone can't tell the difference between a Cuban and Southern accent?

This is another of hundreds of cases where courts ignore the law when it's necessary to affirm a drug dealer's conviction.