The Threatened Future of Peremptory Challenges – Batson v. Kentucky

Abstract

The United States Supreme Court has rendered numerous decisions in its effort to eliminate racial discrimination from the selection of juries. In Strauder v. West Virginia, an 1879 case, the Supreme Court first considered racial discrimination in jury composition. The Court held in Strauder that a black defendant was denied his fourteenth amendment right of equal protection when he was tried before a jury from which members of his race were purposefully excluded by statute.