Batson v. Kentucky (476 U.S. 79)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided April 30, 1986 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 476 U.S. 79 · 106 S. Ct. 1712
- Decided
- April 30, 1986
- Term
- October Term 1985
- Vote
- 7–2
- Majority author
- Justice Powell
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Powell delivered the opinion of the Court. This case requires us to reexamine that portion of Swain v. Alabama, 380 U. S. 202 (1965), 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 race from the petit jury. I Petitioner, a black man, was indicted in Kentucky on charges of second-degree burglary and receipt of stolen goods. On the first day of trial in Jefferson Circuit Court, the judge conducted voir dire examination of the venire, excused certain jurors for cause, and permitted the parties to exercise peremptory challenges. The prosecutor used his peremptory challenges to strike all four black persons on the venire, and a jury composed only of white persons was selected. Defense counsel moved to discharge the jury before it was sworn 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. Counsel requested a hearing on his motion. Without expressly ruling on the request for a hearing, the trial judge observed that the parties were entitled to use their peremptory challenges to “strike anybody they want to.” The judge then…
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