''Duren v. Missouri'', 439 U.S. 357 (1979), was a

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

case related to the Sixth Amendment. It challenged Missouri's law allowing gender-based exemption from jury service.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg ( ; ; March 15, 1933September 18, 2020) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by Presiden ...

, who later became a

Supreme Court Justice The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest-ranking judicial body in the United States. Its membership, as set by the Judiciary Act of 1869, consists of the chief justice of the United States and eight Associate Justice of the Supreme ...

, and Lee Nation argued for Duren in what became Ginsburg's last case before the Supreme Court as an attorney. Part of her argument was that making jury duty optional for women should be struck down because it treated women's service on juries as less valuable than men's, and also discriminated against men who enjoyed no such exemption.

Background

Duren was indicted in 1975 for first-degree murder and first-degree robbery. In a pretrial motion to quash his

jury A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to hear evidence and render an impartial verdict (a finding of fact on a question) officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Juries developed in England du ...

panel, and again in a post-conviction motion for a new trial, he claimed that his right to trial by a jury chosen from a fair cross section of his community was denied by provisions of Missouri law granting women who so request an automatic exemption from jury service. He claimed that this Missouri law violated his sixth amendment rights to an impartial jury.

Issues

Missouri state law at that time permitted women (and those over age 65) to be exempted from jury duty upon request. Furthermore, women who failed to show up for jury duty were automatically exempted. In ''

Taylor v. Louisiana ''Taylor v. Louisiana'', 419 U.S. 522 (1975), was a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark decision of the US Supreme Court which held that women could not be excluded from a ''venire'', or jury duty, jury pool, on the basi ...

'', the Supreme Court held that systematic exclusion of women from the jury pool resulted in jury pools that were not representative of the general population.

Decision

The conviction was overturned and remanded back to trial court. Five other cases before the Supreme Court were also decided in the same way: ''Harlin v. Missouri'', (439 U.S. 459), ''Lee v. Missouri'', (439 U.S. 461), ''Arrington v. Missouri'', ''Burnfin v. Missouri'', ''Combs v. Missouri'' and ''Minor v. Missouri''. The decision was held to be retroactive.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Duren V. Missouri United States equal protection and criminal procedure case law United States jury case law United States Sixth Amendment jury case law United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Burger Court 1979 in United States case law Legal history of Missouri