Sixth Amendment:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

It is the function of voir dire to give the defense and the prosecution the opportunity to inquire into, or have the trial judge inquire into, possible grounds of bias or prejudice that potential jurors may have, and to acquaint the parties with the potential jurors.1 Not every opinion which a juror may entertain about a case necessarily disqualifies him.2 The judge must determine “whether the nature and strength of the opinion . . . raise the presumption of partiality.” 3 It suffices for the judge to question potential jurors about their ability to put aside what they had heard or read about the case, listen to the evidence with an open mind, and render an impartial verdict; the judge’s refusal to go further and question jurors about the contents of news reports to which they had been exposed does not violate the right to an impartial jury.4

Under some circumstances, the Constitution may require the trial court to ask jurors whether they harbor racial bias, although the Supreme Court has sometimes grounded this requirement in “the essential fairness required by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment” rather than in the right to an impartial jury specifically.5 Thus, in a situation in which a Black defendant alleged that he was being prosecuted on false charges because of his civil rights activities, the Court held that due process required the trial court to ask prospective jurors about racial prejudice. A similar rule applies in some capital trials, where the risk of racial prejudice “is especially serious in light of the complete finality of the death sentence.” 6 The right to an impartial jury entitles a defendant accused of an interracial capital offense to have prospective jurors informed of the victim’s race and questioned as to racial bias.7 But in circumstances not suggesting a significant likelihood of racial prejudice infecting a trial, as when the facts are merely that the defendant is Black and the victim White in a non-capital case, the Constitution is satisfied by a more generalized but thorough inquiry into impartiality.8

Although the government is not constitutionally obligated to allow peremptory challenges,9 criminal trials typically provide for a system of peremptory challenges in which both prosecution and defense may, without stating any reason, excuse a certain number of prospective jurors.10 Although racially discriminatory use of peremptory challenges violates the Equal Protection Clause under the standard of proof set forth in Batson v. Kentucky,11 it does not violate the Sixth Amendment, the Court ruled in Holland v. Illinois.12 The Sixth Amendment “no more forbids the prosecutor to strike jurors on the basis of race than it forbids him to strike them on the basis of innumerable other generalized characteristics.” 13 To rule otherwise, the Court reasoned, “would cripple the device of peremptory challenge” and thereby undermine the Amendment’s goal of “impartiality with respect to both contestants.” 14

Footnotes

1

See Rosales-Lopez v. United States, 451 U.S. 182, 188 (1981); Pointer v. United States, 151 U.S. 396, 408–09 (1894); Lewis v. United States, 146 U.S. 370, 377 (1892).

2

Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 520–21, 522 n.21 (1968).

3

Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 155 (1879); see Witherspoon, 391 U.S. at 520–21, 522 n.21.

4

Mu’Min v. Virginia, 500 U.S. 415, 431–32 (1991).

5

Ham v. South Carolina, 409 U.S. 524, 527 (1973).

6

Turner v. Murray, 476 U.S. 28, 35 (1986).

7

Id. at 36–37.

8

Ristaino v. Ross, 424 U.S. 589, 597 (1976); see Turner, 476 U.S. at 33 ( “[U]nder Ristaino, the mere fact that petitioner is black and his victim white does not constitute a ‘special circumstance’ of constitutional proportions. What sets this case apart from Ristaino, however, is that in addition to petitioner’s being accused of a crime against a white victim, the crime charged was a capital offense.” ). In Ristaino, the Court noted that under its supervisory power it would require a federal court faced with the same circumstances to propound appropriate questions to identify racial prejudice if requested by the defendant. Ristaino, 424 U.S. at 597 n.9; see Aldridge v. United States, 283 U.S. 308, 311 (1931). But see Rosales-Lopez v. United States, 451 U.S. 182 (1981), in which the trial judge refused a defense request to inquire about possible bias against Mexicans. A plurality apparently adopted a rule that, all else being equal, the judge should necessarily inquire about racial or ethnic prejudice only in cases of violent crimes in which the defendant and victim are members of different racial or ethnic groups, id. at 192, a rule rejected by two concurring Justices. Id. at 194. Three dissenting Justices thought the judge must always ask when defendant so requested. Id. at 195.

9

The Supreme Court stated: “This Court has long recognized that peremptory challenges are not of federal constitutional dimension.” Rivera v. Illinois, 556 U.S. 148, 151–52 (2009) (internal quotation marks omitted) (state trial court’s erroneous denial of a defendant’s peremptory challenge does not warrant reversal of conviction if all seated jurors were qualified and unbiased).

10

United States v. Martinez-Salazar, 528 U.S. 304, 311–12 (2000); cf. Stilson v. United States, 250 U.S. 583, 586 (1919) (holding that it is no violation of the guarantee of jury impartiality to limit the number of peremptory challenges to each defendant in a multi-party trial).

11

476 U.S. 79 (1986); see Amdt14.S1.8.1.8 Peremptory Challenges.

12

493 U.S. 474 (1990).

13

Id. at 487.

14

Id. at 484.