Court Opinion

ID: 9431884
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:33:28.499021+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:30.831483
License: Public Domain

Justice Kennedy,
concurring.
I join Justice Scalia’s opinion and agree with him that we must reject petitioner’s claim that the fair-cross-section requirement under the Sixth Amendment was violated. The contention is not supported by our precedents and admits of no limiting principle to make it workable in practice. I write this separate concurrence to note that our disposition of the Sixth Amendment claim does not alter what I think to be the established rule, which is that exclusion of a juror on the basis of race, whether or not by use of a peremptory challenge, is a violation of the juror’s constitutional rights. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79 (1986). I agree with Justice Marshall, post, at 490-491, that this case does not resolve the question whether a defendant of a race different from that of the juror may challenge the race-motivated exclusion of jurors under the constitutional principles that underpin Batson. Like Justice Marshall, I find it essential to make clear that if the claim here were based on the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause, it would have merit.
Many of the concerns expressed in Batson, a case where a black defendant objected to the exclusion of black jurors, support as well an equal protection claim by a defendant whose race or ethnicity is different from the dismissed juror’s. To bar the claim whenever the defendant’s race is not the same as the juror’s would be to concede that racial exclusion of citizens from the duty, and honor, of jury service will *489be tolerated, or even condoned. We cannot permit even the inference that this principle will be accepted, for it is inconsistent with the equal participation in civic life that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees. I see no obvious reason to conclude that a defendant’s race should deprive him of standing in his own trial to vindicate his own jurors’ right to sit. As Justice Marshall states, Batson is based in large part on the right to be tried by a jury whose members are selected by nondiscriminatory criteria and on the need to preserve public confidence in the jury system. These are not values shared only by those of a particular color; they are important to all criminal defendants.
Support can be drawn also from our established rules of standing, given the premise that a juror’s right to equal protection is violated when he is excluded because of his race. See Batson, supra, at 87. Individual jurors subjected to peremptory racial exclusion have the legal right to bring suit on their own behalf, Carter v. Jury Comm’n of Greene County, 396 U. S. 320 (1970), but as a practical matter this sort of challenge is most unlikely. The reality is that a juror dismissed because of his race will leave the courtroom with a lasting sense of exclusion from the experience of jury participation, but possessing little incentive or resources to set in motion the arduous process needed to vindicate his own rights. We have noted that a substantial relation may entitle one party to raise the rights of another. See Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U. S. 106, 114-115 (1976). An important bond of this type links the accused and an excluded juror. In sum, the availability of a Fourteenth Amendment claim by a defendant not of the same race as the excluded juror is foreclosed neither by today’s decision nor by Batson.
Batson did contain language indicating that the peremptory challenge of jurors of the same race as the defendant presents a different situation from the peremptory challenge of jurors of another race, but I consider the significance of the discussion to be procedural. An explicit part of the eviden- ■ *490tiary scheme adopted in Batson was the defendant’s showing that he was a member of a “cognizable racial group,” and that the excluded juror was a member of the same group. See 476 U. S., at 96-98. The structure of this scheme rests upon grounds for suspicion where the prosecutor uses his strikes to exclude jurors whose only connection with the defendant is the irrelevant factor of race. It is reasonable in this context to suspect the presence of an illicit motivation, the “belief that blacks could not fairly try a black defendant.” Id., at 101 (White, J., concurring). Where this obvious ground for suspicion is absent, different methods of proof may be appropriate.
With these observations touching upon the matters raised in Justice Marshall’s dissent, I concur in the opinion of the Court.