Batson v. Kentucky 476 US 79; 90 L. Ed. 69; 106 S. Ct. 1712 (1986) FACTS: Batson, a black man, was indicted in Kentucky on charges of second-degree burglary and receipt of stolen goods. On the first day in Jefferson County Circuit Court, the judge conducted vior dire, in which the prosecutor used his peremptory challenges to strike all 4 black persons on the venire, resulting in a jury composed of only white persons. The defense moved to discharge the jury before it was sworn in, claiming that the prosecutor’s removal of the black veniremen violated the petitioner’s right to a jury drawn from a cross section of the community as under the 6 th Amendment and his right to equal protection of the laws as under the 14 th Amendment. The trial judge dismissed the motion, holding that the parties could use their peremptory challenges to dismiss anyone they choose and that the cross section requirement was only applied to the selection of the venire, not the petit jury itself. The Jefferson County Circuit Court convicted Batson on both counts and the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the ruling. It is now under writ of certiorari in the US Supreme Court. ISSUE: Does using peremptory challenges to eliminate all members of a race from the venire violate the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury and Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection of the laws? HOLDING: By a vote of 7-2, the US Supreme Court held that the defendant’s 14 th and 6th Amendment rights were violated in the use of race in making peremptory challenges. RATIONALE: Opinion of the Court: In Strauder v. West Virginia in 1880, the Court decided that a black defendant has been denied equal protection of laws when it puts him on trial before a jury from which members of his race have been purposefully excluded. The Court explained that the purpose of the recently ratified 14 th Amendment was to put an end to governmental discrimination on account of race. In Strauder, the decision was not that the defendant has a right to a jury composed of members of his own race, but that he has a right to a jury chosen using nondiscriminatory criteria. Racial discrimination in the selection of a venire denies equal protection, because it removes the protection that a trial by jury is supposed to ensure. In our system of justice, the jury is intended to safeguard a person accused of a crime from the arbitrary exercise of power by the judge. A person’s race is simply unrelated to his fitness as a juror, in which competence depends on an assessment of individual qualifications and ability to impartially consider evidence. The discriminatory selection of a jury not only affects the defendant and excluded juror but also the entire community. The principles announced not only forbid discrimination on account of race in selection of the venire, but also in selection of the petit jury. Although a prosecutor ordinarily is entitled to exercise permitted peremptory challenges for any reason that may be related to his view concerning the outcome of the case to be tried, the Equal Protection Clause forbids the prosecutor to challenge potential jurors solely on account of race. In Swain v. Alabama, this Court recognized that a “State’s purposeful or deliberate denial to Negroes on account of race of participation as jurors in the administration of justice violates the Equal Protection Clause,” a principal that has been
1
repeatedly reaffirmed in this Court. Swain required the Court to decide whether a black defendant was denied equal protection by the State’s exercise of peremptory challenges to strike the 6 black persons included on the petit jury venire. While the defendant’s claim was rejected for failure to provide purposeful discrimination, the Court decided that the Equal Protection Clause placed some limits on the State’s exercise of peremptory challenges. A prosecutor may not use his challenges to exclude blacks from the jury for reasons unrelated to the outcome of the case, denying blacks the same right and opportunity to participate in the administration of justice enjoyed by the white population. A black defendant could make out prima facie case of purposeful discrimination on proof that the peremptory challenge system was being distorted in that manner. For example, if a prosecutor was removing blacks from all juries, no matter the crime, circumstances, or defendant, evidence of purposeful discrimination would be sufficient for the defendant to make a prima facie case. Evidence offered in Swain, however, did not meet that standard; the defendant offered no proof of the circumstances under which prosecutors were responsible for striking black jurors beyond the facts of his own case. A black defendant alleging that members of his race have been impermissibly excluded from the venire may make a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination by showing that the relevant facts give rise to an inference of discriminatory purpose. Proof of systemic exclusion from the venire raises such an inference, as the result “bespeaks discrimination.” The Court has also found a case in which the defendant’s race was substantially misrepresented because the practice of selecting the venire provided the opportunity for discrimination. The burden then shifts to the State, which must demonstrate that “permissible racially neutral selection criteria and procedures have produced the monochromatic result.” In short, the Court has recognized that the defendant may make a prima facie case of “purposeful racial discrimination in selection of the venire by relying solely on the facts concerning it selection it his case.” The standards for assessing a prima facie case regarding discriminatory selection of the venire have been fully established since Swain. The Court has recognized that the defendant may make a prima facie case of “purposeful racial discrimination in selection of the petit jury solely on evidence concerning the prosecutor’s exercise of peremptory challenges at the defendant’s trial. To establish such a case, the defendant must first show that he is a member of a recognizable racial group, and that the prosecutor has exercised peremptory challenges to remove members of the defendant’s race from the venire. Second, the defendant is permitted to rely on the fact that peremptory challenges constitute a jury selection process that permits “those to discriminate who are of mind to discriminate.” Finally, the defendant must show that these facts and other relevant circumstances raise the conclusion that the prosecutor used race to determine which veniremen to exclude from the petit jury. In deciding whether the defendant has made the necessary showing, the trial court should consider all relevant circumstances. The trial judge should be able to decide if the circumstances concerning the prosecutor’s use of peremptory challenges create a prima facie case. Once the prima facie showing is confirmed, the burden shifts to the State to offer a neutral explanation for challenging black jurors. Just as the Equal Protection Clause forbids the States to exclude black persons from the venire on the assumption that blacks as a group are unqualified to serve as jurors, it also forbids the States to strike them on the assumption that they will be biased simply because the defendant is black.
2
In this case, the petitioner made a timely objection to prosecutor’s removal of all black persons from the venire, and because the trail court flatly rejected the objection without requiring the prosecutor to give an explanation for the action, this case is remanded for further proceedings. Dissent: The Court states that this case only involves a reexamination of a portion of Swain v. Alabama concerning “the evidentiary burden placed on a criminal defendant who claims that he has been denied equal protection through the State’s use of peremptory challenges to exclude members of his from the jury.” The majority opinion deals with more than an evidentiary burden. The Court has overruled one of the fundamental principles of Swain: that the State may use peremptory challenges to remove prospective jurors of the same race as the defendant. In discussing the State’s need to establish a nondiscriminatory basis for striking blacks from the jury, the Court makes statements contradictory to the Equal Protection Clause and irrelevant to the evidentiary burden. There is simply nothing unequal about striking blacks from the jury in cases dealing with black defendants, so long as such challenges are also used in excluding white jurors in cases with white defendants, etc. As long as these instincts, although they may be crudely stereotypical, are applied across the board to jurors of all races, their use does not violate the Equal Protection Clause. The use of peremptory challenges does not violate the 6 th Amendment’s impartiality component, as suggested by the Court. Because the case specific use of peremptory challenges does not deny blacks the right to serve as jurors in bases with nonblack defendants, it harms neither the excluded jurors nor the community. The use of group affiliations has long been used as a proxy for potential juror partiality. The assumption that members of a particular group may be biased toward members of the same group has been long accepted as a legitimate basis for the exercise of peremptory challenges. There is nothing in the Equal Protection Clause or any other constitutional provision that justifies such a departure from the substantive holding in Swain. The petitioner failed to make a sufficient showing to overcome the presumption announced in Swain that the use of peremptory challenges was related to the content of the case.
3