People v. Vega

—Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Juanita Bing Newton, J.), rendered June 17, 1991, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree, and sentencing him, as a second felony offender, to a term of from 9 to 18 years, unanimously affirmed.

The People established a prima facie case of purposeful racial discrimination in the use of peremptory challenges when they established that the defense used 7 of its 8 challenges to exclude all but one of the white persons on the panel of 16 (People v Kern, 75 NY2d 638 , cert denied 498 US 824 ). Thereafter, defendant failed to give a legitimate, race-neutral reason for his challenge to a white male juror (People v Jenkins, 75 NY2d 550 , 556), where the two criteria he claimed were the basis for his challenge, were not raised as an objection against the seating of the Hispanic female juror he found acceptable. Concur — Rosenberger, J. P., Wallach, Kupferman, Asch and Kassal, JJ.