Jury box
In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court held, in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, that race-based peremptory challenges violate the Equal Protection Clause. Batson was a landmark decision, overruling precedent granting prosecutors virtually unfettered discretion to strike Black jurors. But Batson’s shortfalls were evident from the first and have become only more obvious over time: “[T]he use of race-and gender-based stereotypes in the jury-selection process seems better organized and more systematized than ever before.” Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. 231, 270 (2005) (Breyer, J., concurring).
Reform is necessary—and possible. In 2018, Washington state enacted a court rule replacing the “intentional discrimination” test with whether an “objective observer” would believe that race was a factor in the decision to strike the juror, and deemed proxies for race, such as distrust of the police, presumptively invalid. Other states are considering similar and additional measures.
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