“Jury service is one of the most significant ways in which an individual can directly participate in the administration of justice and influence the adjudicative process. Yet the right of a prospective juror to be free from discrimination in her participation in jury service is put at risk by a litigant's unfettered discretion in the use of the peremptory challenge.' In order to safeguard a potential juror's equal protection guarantee against discriminatory exclusion from jury service, the United States Supreme Court, in Batson v. Kentucky and its progeny, imposed significant restrictions on the way in which litigants exercise peremptory challenges. Litigants may not base peremptory challenges on the race, ethnicity, or gender of a prospective juror.

The Supreme Court's limitations on the way in which litigants utilize peremptory challenges demonstrates the superiority of a prospective juror's constitutional rights over the litigant's privilege to exercise peremptory challenges.” BATSON MEETS THE FIRST AMENDMENT: PROHIBITING PEREMPTORY CHALLENGES THAT VIOLATE A PROSPECTIVE JUROR'S SPEECH AND ASSOCIATION RIGHTS, by Assistant Professor of Law, New England School of Law. J.D., Hofstra University School of Law, 1986.

In 2019 an Appellate Court Found, Lasak as a Judge Did Not Properly Handle a Queens ADA's Use of a Peremptory Challenge to Exclude a Young African American Man From a Jury. Gregory Lasak, former Queens supreme court justice and now candidate for Queens district attorney, was the judge on the case of People v Alexander. In 2016 Diamonte Alexander (18 years old) was found guilty by a jury of the November 2012 murder of a young man in Rockaway, Queens. On appeal Alexander alleged that during jury selection, the prosecutor sought to exclude a potential juror “based solely on the potential juror’s race.”

The New York Law Journal reported “A Second Department panel found the former Queens criminal judge had failed to properly handle a 'Batson' challenge by the defense, sending the case back for retrial.

Former Queens state judge turned district attorney candidate Gregory Lasak has seen a recent manslaughter conviction secured in his courtroom reversed on appeal, after the panel found he failed to properly handle concerns of racial bias in a move that kept a prospective juror who was black off the case.

The reversal and remittance for a new trial in Queens Supreme Court comes during the early days of Lasak’s bid to replace Richard Brown, who announced last week he wouldn’t run for re-election as DA.” DA Hopeful, Ex-Judge Lasak Reversed Over Handling of DA Bias in Jury Selection, By Colby Hamilton, New York Law Journal.

​People v Alexander, 2019 NY Slip Op 00135, Decided on January 9, 2019, Appellate Division, Second Department. This is the relevant part of the court’s decision.

"DECISION & ORDER

Appeal by the defendant from a judgment of the Supreme Court, Queens County (Gregory Lasak, J.), rendered October 24, 2016, convicting him of manslaughter in the first degree and criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree (two counts), upon a jury verdict, and imposing sentence.

ORDERED that the judgment is reversed, on the law, and the matter is remitted to the Supreme Court, Queens County, for a new trial.

The Supreme Court should not have granted the prosecutor's peremptory challenge to a prospective black juror because the court failed to determine whether the prosecutor provided sufficient race-neutral explanations for challenging the potential juror…

Here, during jury selection, the defendant alleged that the prosecutor was exercising a peremptory challenge to a potential juror based solely on the potential juror's race. After the Supreme Court found that the defendant made a prima facie showing that the prosecutor was exercising her peremptory challenges in a discriminatory manner, the prosecutor stated that she believed this potential juror to be too young and inexperienced to serve on a murder trial. The court allowed for further questioning of this potential juror and, based on this additional questioning, determined that the potential juror seemed to have difficulty understanding the questions posed to him, that he appeared to have "a glazed-eye look," and that his "ability to communicate is somewhat impaired." The court then allowed the prosecutor to exercise a peremptory challenge against the potential juror, deeming the peremptory challenge to be not "in any way based on any discrimination." However, the court never provided a ruling on the defendant's initial Batson challenge, relating to the prosecutor's contention that the juror was too young and inexperienced to serve.

Under these circumstances, the Supreme Court failed in its duty to determine whether the prosecutor's race-neutral explanations were credible."