Mary Berghuis, Warden v. Diapolis Smith (559 U.S. 314)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided March 30, 2010 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 559 U.S. 314 · 130 S. Ct. 1382
- Decided
- March 30, 2010
- Term
- October Term 2009
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Ginsburg
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court. The Sixth Amendment secures to criminal defendants the right to be tried by an impartial jury drawn from sources reflecting a fair cross section of the community. See Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U. S. 522 (1975). The question presented in this case is whether that right was accorded to respondent Diapolis Smith, an African-American convicted of second-degree murder by an all-white jury in Kent County, Michigan, in 1993. At the time of Smith’s trial, African-Americans constituted 7.28% of Kent County’s jury-eligible population, and 6% of the pool from which potential jurors were drawn. In Duren v. Missouri, 439 U. S. 357 (1979), this Court described three showings a criminal defendant must maké to establish a prima facie violation of the Sixth Amendment’s fair-cross-section requirement. He or she must show: “(1) that the group alleged to be excluded is a ‘distinctive’ group in the community; (2) that the representation of this group in venires from which juries are selected is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community; and (3) that this underrepresentation is due to systematic exclusion of the group in the jury-selection process.” Id., at 364. The first showing is, in most cases, easily made; the second and third are more likely to generate controversy. The defendant in Duren readily met…
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