Jurors and Racial Bias

James Kirkland Batson is black, and the Kentucky jurors who convicted him in 1984 of burglary and receipt of stolen goods were all white. The prosecutor had excluded four blacks from the jury with peremptory challenges, which have long been exercised without any explanation required. But last week in an important 7-to-2 decision, the Supreme Court reined in the practice. Justice Lewis Powell, writing for the majority, observed that intentional racial bias denies "the protection that a trial by jury is intended to secure"--a jury of one's peers. So the court changed the rules. Previously, a black defendant alleging the biased exclusion of black jurors had to show that the prosecutor invariably used peremptory challenges to exclude blacks in case after case. Now, said Powell, if a defendant can show a pattern of biased challenges in his trial alone, the prosecutor must demonstrate a nonracial motive for the challenges.

In a dissent joined by William Rehnquist, Chief Justice Warren Burger complained that the majority had infringed on "a procedure which has been part of the common law for many centuries." A surprising member of the majority was Byron White, author of a 1965 court decision that last week's ruling overturned. "The time has come," said White, to take a further step to root out discrimination in jury selection.

In another 7-to-2 decision involving racial bias, the court ruled that a defendant on trial for a crime that carries the death penalty is entitled to have prospective jurors questioned about possible racial bias if the charges concern an interracial crime. In the 1979 Virginia murder trial of Willie Lloyd Turner, the judge refused to ask potential jurors whether their verdict would be influenced by the fact that the defendant was black and the victim white. The court's new rule is necessary, Justice White said, because "the risk of racial prejudice infecting a capital sentencing proceeding is especially serious in light of the complete finality of the death sentence."