Court Opinion

ID: 9430487
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:50.41857+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:24.567032
License: Public Domain

*45Justice Marshall,
with whom Justice Brennan joins,
concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part.
For the reasons stated in my opinion in Ross v. Massachusetts, 414 U. S. 1080 (1973) (dissenting from denial of certiorari), I believe that a criminal defendant is entitled to inquire on voir dire about the potential racial bias of jurors whenever the case involves a violent interracial crime. As the Court concedes, “it is plain that there is some risk of racial prejudice influencing a jury whenever there is a crime involving interracial violence.” Ante, at 36, n. 8. To my mind that risk plainly outweighs the slight cost of allowing the defendant to choose whether to make an inquiry concerning such possible prejudice. This Court did not identify in Ristaino v. Ross, 424 U. S. 589 (1976), nor does it identify today, any additional burdens that would accompany such a rule. I therefore cannot agree with the Court’s continuing rejection of the simple prophylactic rule proposed in Ristaino.
Even if I agreed with the Court that a per se rule permitting inquiry into racial bias is appropriate only in capital cases, I could not accept the Court’s failure to remedy the denial of such inquiry in this capital case by reversing petitioner’s conviction. Henceforth any capital defendant accused of an interracial crime may inquire into racial prejudice on voir dire. When, as here, the same jury sits at the guilt phase and the penalty phase, these defendants will be assured an impartial jury at both phases. Yet petitioner is forced to accept a conviction by what may have been a biased jury. This is an incongruous and fundamentally unfair result. I therefore concur only in the Court’s judgment vacating petitioner’s sentence, and dissent from the Court’s refusal to reverse the conviction as well.