| Batson v. Kentucky |
|
Supreme Court of the United States |
Argued December 12, 1985
Decided April 30, 1986
|
| Full case name: |
Batson v. Kentucky |
|
| Citations: |
476 U.S. 79; 476 U.S. 79; 106 S. Ct. 1712; 90 L. Ed. 2d 69; 1986 U.S. LEXIS 150; 54 U.S.L.W.
4425 |
|
|
| Prior history: |
Defendant found guilty in Kentucky Circuit Court; Supreme Court of Kentucky affirmed; cert. granted, 471 U.S. 1052 (1985) |
|
|
| Subsequent history: |
Remanded |
|
|
| Holding |
| Strauder v. West Virginia reaffirmed; prosecutors may not use race
as a factor in making peremptory challenges; defendants must only make a prima
facie showing on the evidence from their case to mount a challenge to race-based use of peremptories. |
| Court membership |
Chief Justice: Warren E. Burger
Associate Justices: William J. Brennan, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr.,
William Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens,
Sandra Day O'Connor |
| Case opinions |
Majority by: Powell
Joined by: Brennan, White, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens, O'Connor
Concurrence by: White
Concurrence by: Marshall
Concurrence by: Stevens
Joined by: Brennan
Concurrence by: O'Connor
Dissent by: Burger
Joined by: Rehnquist
Dissent by: Rehnquist
Joined by: Burger
|
| Laws applied |
| U.S. Const., amend. XIV |
Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which it ruled that a prosecutor's use of
peremptory challenges, dismissal of jurors without stating a valid cause for doing
so, may not be used to exclude jurors based solely on their race. The court ruled that this practice violated the
Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Background
The petitione, James Kirkland Batson, was an African American man convicted of
burglary and receipt of stolen goods in a Louisville, Kentucky circuit court by a
jury composed entirely of white jurors. The key part of the appeal was based on the jury selection,
or voir dire phase of the trial. During this phase potential jurors are examined to determine
their competence and suitability and, in this particular case, the judge dismissed several potential jurors for various causes.
During voir dire, both the prosecution and defense also often have a certain limited number of peremptory challenges, which can be used to excuse any juror for any reason which the particular
side believes will help their case.
In the case at issue, the defense peremptorily challenged nine potential jurors and the prosecutor, Joe Gutmann, peremptorily
challenged six, including all four black persons, and a jury composed only of white persons was selected. The defense counsel
moved to discharge the jury on the ground that the prosecutor's removal of the black veniremen violated petitioner's rights under
the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to a jury drawn
from a cross section of the community, and under the Fourteenth Amendment to equal protection of the laws. Without expressly
ruling on petitioner's request for a hearing, the trial judge denied the motion, and the jury ultimately convicted the
defendant.
The defendant appealed the conviction to the Kentucky Supreme Court, who
affirmed the conviction. That court cited Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202
(1965) and held that a defendant alleging lack of a fair cross section must demonstrate systematic
exclusion of a group of jurors from the panel of prospective jurors. Batson continued his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Certiorari was granted to decide whether petitioner was tried "in violation of constitutional
provisions guaranteeing the defendant an impartial jury and a jury composed of persons representing a fair cross section of the
community."
The court's decision
In a 7-2 decision authored by Justice Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr. the court
ruled in favor of the petitioner. The case overruled Swain v. Alabama by lowering the burden of proof that a defendant
must show in order to make a prima facie case (which does not require proof or reasoning) of purposeful
discrimination.
In Swain, the 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". But they ruled that the defendant
had the burden of proving a systematic striking of black jurors throughout the county,
that is, that the peremptory challenge system as a whole was being perverted. In Batson the court ruled that the defendant
could make a prima facie case for purposeful racial discrimination in jury selection by relying on the record only in his
own case. They explain further:
The defendant first must show that he is a member of a cognizable racial group, and that the
prosecutor has exercised peremptory challenges to remove from the venire [jury pool] members of the defendant's race. The
defendant may also rely on the fact that peremptory challenges constitute a jury selection practice that permits those to
discriminate who are of a mind to discriminate. Finally, the defendant must show that such facts and any other relevant
circumstances raise an inference that the prosecutor used peremptory challenges to exclude the veniremen from the petit jury on
account of their race. Once the defendant makes a prima facie showing, the burden shifts to the State to come forward with a
neutral explanation for challenging black jurors.
The decision also held the following:
- a State denies a black defendant equal protection when it puts him on trial before a jury from which members of his race have
been purposely excluded;
- A defendant has no right to a petit jury composed in whole or in part of persons of his own race. However, the Equal
Protection Clause guarantees the defendant that the State will not exclude members of his race from the jury venire on account of
race, or on the false assumption that members of his race as a group are not qualified to serve as jurors; and
- the peremptory challenge occupies an important position in trial procedures.
The decision of the court was not retroactive This meant that people convicted prior to the Batson decision by juries
whose racial composition was influenced by peremptory challenges not consistent with this opinion could not appeal on the grounds
outlined in the opinion.
Marshall's concurring opinion
In his concurring opinion, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote that "the decision today
will not end the racial discrimination that peremptories inject into the jury-selection process. That goal can be accomplished
only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely." His opinion went on to call for that elimination where he wrote that, "the
inherent potential of peremptory challenges to distort the jury process by permitting the exclusion of jurors on racial grounds
should ideally lead the Court to ban them entirely from the criminal justice system".
Burger's dissenting opinion
In his dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Warren Burger argued that the court's decision in Batson effectively did away with the
peremptory challenge, "a procedure which has been part of the common law for many centuries
and part of our jury system for nearly 200 years". The peremptory challenge, he believed, was largely ended and replaced with
something very similar to challenge for cause:
The effect of the Court's decision, however, will be to force the defendant to come forward and 'articulate a neutral
explanation' for his peremptory challenge, a burden he probably cannot meet. This example demonstrates that today's holding will
produce juries that the parties do not believe are truly impartial. This will surely do more than 'disconcert' litigants; it will
diminish confidence in the jury system.
Batson in modern law
Since it has become such an oft-used tactic, the term "Batson challenge" has come to mean the act of claiming, based on
this decision, that a trial should be invalidated on the basis of peremptory challenges having excluded a cognizable group from
the jury. The Batson decision was in reference to jury selection in criminal trials, but the court later extended the same
rule to civil trials in Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete
Company.
Batson's authority has recently been reinforced in a pair of 2005 decisions,
Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. 231 (2005) and Johnson v. California, 545 U.S. 162 (2005).
The idea of Batson challenges also extends to gender-based peremptory challenges. See J.E.B.
v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., 511 U.S. 127 (1994).
Subsequent history of the case
When the Supreme Court reversed his conviction, James Kirkland Batson was serving a 20 year sentence from the case. Rather
than risk a retrial, Batson pled guilty to burglary and received a five year prison sentence. After that sentence, Batson
continued to get in trouble with the law, being convicted of several offenses including burglary, theft, receiving stolen
property and being a persistent felony offender. He was released from prison again in January 2003 and will remain on parole
through 2026.
Joe Gutmann, the prosecutor in Batson's 1982 trial, has said that the Supreme Court's decision was "a good one" because it
prevents lawyers from discriminating in jury selection. Gutmann now teaches government and history at inner-city Louisville
Central High School. He has said he removed the black members of the venire not because of their race but because they were young
and might sympathize with Batson.
Batson is now a construction worker in Louisville, Kentucky and says of the media attention regarding the famous case that
bears his name, "It's so old, they ought to let it go."
See also
External links
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