State of Arizona v. Francisco Miguel Urrea, 421 P.3d 153

Francisco Miguel Urrea was tried for transportation of a narcotic drug for sale; during jury selection he challenged the prosecutor’s use of six peremptory strikes, arguing five targeted jurors of Hispanic background.
Trial court held a Batson hearing, found Batson violations as to three strikes, concluded the prosecutor offered no race-neutral justification for those three, but found no prosecutorial misconduct.
The trial court remedied the Batson violation by restoring the three wrongfully excluded jurors to their places on the venire and forfeiting the State’s three peremptory strikes; Urrea sought a mistrial and dismissal of the venire, which the court denied.
The court of appeals (divided) affirmed the conviction and the restoration remedy; a dissent argued restoration was incomplete and urged restoring defense strikes or starting selection anew.
The Arizona Supreme Court granted review to resolve the proper remedies for Batson violations in Arizona and whether the trial court abused its discretion in ordering restoration rather than declaring a mistrial.

Issue	Urrea's Argument	State's Argument	Held
Whether restoration of wrongfully excluded jurors is an adequate Batson remedy	Trial court should have declared a mistrial and selected a new venire	Restoring excluded jurors to the venire and forfeiting the State’s strikes is sufficient	Restoration and forfeiture were permissible; court did not abuse discretion
Whether additional remedies (e.g., new voir dire or restoring defense strikes) were required	More extensive relief (new venire or restoration of defense strikes) necessary to cure harm	No additional remedies required; remedy should be case-specific	No requirement for additional remedies here; defendant waived requests beyond mistrial
Whether Batson requires excluded jurors to be seated on petit jury	Urrea argued for maximal relief (new venire) implicitly to secure an impartial petit jury	State argued relief need only restore venire composition absent discrimination	Court reaffirmed defendant has right to fair jury, not a particular jury; restoration vindicates jurors’ rights
Standard of review for Batson remedy	N/A (procedural)	Trial-court remedy reviewed for abuse of discretion	Abuse-of-discretion standard applies; trial court’s remedy upheld

Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (Equal protection prohibits racially motivated peremptory strikes)
United States v. Martinez-Salazar, 528 U.S. 304 (peremptory challenges are not of constitutional dimension like challenges for cause)
Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400 (juror has right not to be excluded because of race; importance of safeguarding jury-selection integrity)
McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (framework for disparate-treatment analysis analogous to Batson)
Albermarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405 (make-whole relief in discrimination cases aims to restore status quo ante)
Snyder v. Louisiana, 552 U.S. 472 (trial court’s pivotal role in Batson determinations)
State v. Garcia, 224 Ariz. 1 (Arizona discussion of Batson framework)