Opinion ID: 1661524
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: appellate review of circuit judge's evaluation of state's reason for peremptory strike

Text: The basic question here, really, is how important does the U.S. Supreme Court believe the allowance of peremptory challenges is to a fair trial? Other than Justice Marshall, one would have to conclude considerable, because despite the perspicacious misgivings upon which Justice Marshall based his view that peremptory challenges should be abolished altogether, the Court has not done so. Both Chief Justice Burger's dissenting predictions and Justice Marshall's concerns in his concurring opinion have come to pass in abundance. The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clarion clear that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments' equal protection right vouchsafed by Batson absolutely prohibits any party to a lawsuit, in the exercise of his peremptory challenge, to acknowledge openly or tacitly that a juror is being excused solely on account of his race, or solely because the party intuitively believes such juror will on account of his race be biased against his case. Some explanation had to be given for exercising the challenge. Batson, 476 U.S. at 97-98, 106 S.Ct. at 1723-24, 90 L.Ed.2d at 88. Thus, in Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400, 111 S.Ct. 1364, 113 L.Ed.2d 411 (1991), involving a white criminal defendant, when the State gave no reason for peremptorily challenging blacks, the Court reversed. Again, in Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., 500 U.S. 614, 111 S.Ct. 2077, 114 L.Ed.2d 660 (1991), a civil case in which the corporate defendant gave no reason in a United States district court trial for peremptorily challenging blacks on the venire, the Court held that under the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment Batson applied and reversed. Most recently, in Georgia v. McCollum, ___ U.S. ___, 112 S.Ct. 2348, 120 L.Ed.2d 33, (1992), the Court held that Batson applied to peremptory challenges exercised by white criminal defendants charged with an assault on blacks, and reversed the Georgia Supreme Court's holding that the defendants in such case need offer no explanation.