Terry Campbell v. Louisiana (523 U.S. 392)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided April 21, 1998 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 523 U.S. 392 · 118 S. Ct. 1419
- Decided
- April 21, 1998
- Term
- October Term 1997
- Vote
- 7–2
- Majority author
- Justice Kennedy
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court. We must decide whether a white criminal defendant has standing to object to discrimination against black persons in the selection of grand jurors. Finding he has the requisite standing to raise equal protection and due process claims, we reverse and remand. I A grand jury in Evangeline Parish, Louisiana, indicted petitioner Terry Campbell on one count of second-degree murder. Campbell, who is white, filed a timely pretrial motion to quash the indictment on the grounds the grand jury was constituted in violation of his equal protection and due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment and in violation of the Sixth Amendment’s fair-cross-section requirement. Campbell alleged a longstanding practice of racial discrimination in the selection of grand jury forepersons in the parish. His sole piece of evidence is that, between January 1976 and August 1993, no black person served as a grand jury foreperson in the parish, even though more than 20 percent of the registered voters were black persons. See Brief for Petitioner 16. The State does not dispute this evidence. The trial judge refused to quash the indictment because “Campbell, being a white man accused of killing another white man,” lacked standing to complain “where all of the forepersons were white.” App. to Pet. for Cert. G-33. After Campbell’s first trial resulted in…
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