Griffith v. Kentucky (479 U.S. 314)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 13, 1987 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 479 U.S. 314 · 107 S. Ct. 708
- Decided
- January 13, 1987
- Term
- October Term 1986
- Vote
- 6–3
- Majority author
- Justice Blackmun
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Blackmun delivered the opinion of the Court. These cases, one state and one federal, concern the retrospective application of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79 (1986). In Batson, 476 U. S., at 96-98, this Court ruled that a defendant in a state criminal trial could establish a prima facie case of racial discrimination violative of the Fourteenth Amendment, based on the prosecution’s use of peremptory challenges to strike members of the defendant’s race from the jury venire, and that, once the defendant had made the prima facie showing, the burden shifted to the prosecution to come forward with a neutral explanation for those challenges. In the present cases we consider whether that ruling is applicable to litigation pending on direct state or federal review or not yet final when .Batson was decided. We answer that question in the affirmative. I A. No. 85-5221. Petitioner Randall Lamont Griffith, a black person, was indicted in 1982 in the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, Ky. (the same court where Batson was tried), on charges of first-degree robbery, theft by unlawful taking, and being a persistent felony offender in the second degree. App. 2. On the first day of trial, the prosecution and defense attorneys conducted voir dire examination of the jury venire and exercised their peremptory challenges. The prosecution used four of its five allotted challenges to strike…
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