Batson v. Kentucky

James Batson, a Black man, stands trial in Louisville, Kentucky for burglary and receipt of stolen goods. During jury selection, both sides may remove a number of jurors without giving any reason: the peremptory strike, a tool as old as the jury itself. The prosecutor uses his strikes to remove all four Black members of the jury pool. An all-white jury convicts Batson. His lawyer objected at trial and was overruled, because under existing law a defendant had to prove a prosecutor struck Black jurors systematically, across many cases, an almost impossible showing. Batson's appeal asks whether one trial's strikes can be enough.

Kentucky argues that the peremptory strike only works if it requires no justification: lawyers on both sides strike jurors on instinct and experience, and forcing explanations turns jury selection into a trial of its own. Batson argues that the Equal Protection Clause cannot tolerate a state official removing citizens from jury service because of their race, whatever the tool is called, and that a right the defendant can never practically enforce is not a right. Justice Marshall went further than the majority: only abolishing peremptory strikes entirely would end the discrimination, because motives are too easy to disguise.

If Kentucky wins, race-based strikes remain invisible and unreviewable inside an unquestionable tradition. If Batson wins, every criminal courtroom in America gets a new procedure: object, require a race-neutral reason, let the judge decide if it is pretext. That procedure now bears his name. Whether it works is still contested four decades later. Studies keep finding Black jurors struck at far higher rates, and reasons as thin as a juror's neighborhood or body language routinely survive review. Marshall's warning is the live question.