People v. Showers

—Judgment, Supreme Court, Bronx County (Lawrence Bernstein, J.), rendered May 11, 2000, convicting defendant, after a jury trial, of robbery in the second degree, and sentencing him, as a second felony offender, to a term of 12 years, unanimously affirmed.

Defendant’s application pursuant to Batson v Kentucky (476 US 79) was properly denied. The court made a sufficient inquiry into whether the race-neutral reason offered by the prosecutor for challenging the panelist at issue was pretextual. Although the court may have initially expressed some skepticism about the offered race-neutral reason,…