Batson v. Kentucky

Background

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 his appeal was based on the jury selection, or voir dire, phase of the trial. During this phase potential jurors are examined by the Court, the prosecution, and the defense, to determine their competence, willingness, and suitability to hear, deliberate and decide a case put to them to render a verdict. During voir dire the judge can dismiss jurors and both the prosecution and the defense have a limited number of peremptory challenges, which are accepted on their face, as the right of the party making the challenge and which they use to excuse any juror for any reason which the particular side believes will help their case.

In this case, the judge dismissed several potential jurors for various causes. 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 whole 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 his conviction to the Kentucky Supreme Court, which affirmed the conviction. That court cited Swain v. Alabama, 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. That is, the defendant had to show that not just in his case, but as a process, juries in his community were being constructed so as to not represent a cross section of that community. Batson continued his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted certiorari 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 Supreme Court's decision

In a 7–2 decision authored by Justice Lewis Powell, the Supreme Court ruled in Batson's favor. The court overruled Swain v. Alabama by lowering the burden of proof that a defendant must meet to make a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination. In Swain, the Court had 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 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. The Court explained:

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 Court also held that:

Justice Marshall, concurring with the majority, called the decision "historic" but added: "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."

Dissents

In his dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Warren Burger argued that the court's decision in Batson "sets aside 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". He believed the majority was replacing peremptory challenges with something very similar to challenge for cause, but was unclear in explaining the standard to be applied. "I am at a loss to discern the governing principles here," he wrote. "I join my colleagues in wishing the nation's judges well as they struggle to grasp how to implement today's holding."

Justice Rehnquist wrote that the majority misapplied equal protection doctrine: "In my view, there is simply nothing 'unequal' about the state using its peremptory challenges to strike blacks from the jury in cases involving black defendants, so long as such challenges are also used to exclude whites in cases involving white defendants, Hispanics in cases involving Hispanic defendants, Asians in cases involving Asian defendants, and so on."

Impact

Whether the principles of Batson applied retroactively to anyone convicted previously by juries whose racial composition was influenced by peremptory challenges not consistent with this opinion was for a time uncertain. In Allen v. Hardy (1986), the Court held that it did not apply retroactively to collateral review of final convictions. In Griffith v. Kentucky (1987), it decided it would apply it in cases on direct review.

Batson challenge

The term Batson challenge describes an objection to opposing counsel's use of a peremptory challenge to exclude a juror from the jury pool based on criteria the courts have found disqualifying, as race was the sole rationale for exclusion in Batson.

In some cases, parties have appealed a verdict or judgment and asked it be invalidated because one or more peremptory challenges excluded a cognizable group from the jury. Though the Batson decision addressed jury selection in criminal trials, in 1991 the Supreme Court later extended the same rule to civil trials in Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Company. In 1994, in J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B.., the Court held that peremptory challenges based on sex alone violated the standard established in Batson as well.

The authority of Batson was reinforced by a pair of 2005 decisions, Miller-El v. Dretke and Johnson v. California. The first expanded the evidence that can be considered when establishing that a peremptory challenge was based solely on objectionable criteria. The second addressed the standard of proof by which a Batson challenge should be assessed, finding that it was sufficient to require "an inference" that discrimination was the basis for a peremptory challenge rather than proof that discrimination was "more likely than not" its basis.

Batson has been applied to the discriminatory use of peremptory strikes against judges in a California case, Superior Court v. Williams. Defense counsel objected to the prosecution's motion to disqualify an African-American judge, suspecting that the motion was racially motivated. The Court noted that use of Equal Protection in Batson to combat racially discriminatory strikes against jurors was well established and that subsequent decisions had extended these protections in other contexts. The Court held that "these principles are equally applicable to race-based challenges to judges."

U.S. v. Blaylock

An attempt to extend Batson to cover challenges based on sexual orientation failed in 2005. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a defendant's criminal appeal in U.S. v. Blaylock, 421 F.3d 758, because it found the prosecution had "offered legitimate nondiscriminatory reasons for striking the panel member". The court did not consider whether the Batson challenge rule applied, but its opinion expressed doubt that it did.

SmithKline v. Abbott

Extending Batson to cover challenges based on sexual orientation was revisited again in 2012, this time in a civil case. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals considered the issue in SmithKline Beecham Corporation v. Abbott Laboratories, 740 F.3d 471 (2014): It ruled unanimously on January 21, 2014, that, based on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), distinctions based on sexual orientation are subject to the "heightened scrutiny" standard of review and that "equal protection prohibits peremptory strikes based on sexual orientation". Defendant Abbott Laboratories decided not to appeal further. However, at least one circuit judge sua sponte called for rehearing en banc, and on March 27 the court asked both parties to file briefs on the question. On June 24, the justices of the Ninth Circuit voted not to rehear the case en banc.

Case participants after Batson

When the Supreme Court reversed his conviction, Batson was serving a twenty-year sentence. Rather than risk a retrial, he pleaded guilty to burglary and received a five-year prison sentence. After his release, Batson was convicted of several offenses including burglary, theft, receiving stolen property, and persistent-felony convictions. He was released from prison again in January 2003 and remains on parole through 2026.

Joe Gutmann, the prosecutor in Batson's 1982 trial, said that the Supreme Court's decision was "a good one" because it prevents lawyers from discriminating in jury selection. He 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 a construction worker in Louisville, Kentucky, and says of the media attention the case received: "It's so old, they ought to let it go."