''Georgia v. McCollum'', 505 U.S. 42 (1992), was a case in which the

Supreme Court of the United States 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 ...

held that a criminal ''defendant'' cannot make

peremptory challenge In American and Australian law, the right of peremptory challenge is a right in jury selection for the attorneys to reject a certain number of potential jurors without stating a reason. Other potential jurors may be challenged for cause, i.e. by ...

s based solely on race. The court had previously held in '' Batson v. Kentucky'' (1986) that prosecutors cannot make peremptory challenges based on race, but did not address whether defendants could use them. The court had already ruled in ''

Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Company ''Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Company'', 500 U.S. 614 (1991), was a United States Supreme Court case which held that peremptory challenges may not be used to exclude jurors on the basis of race in civil trials. ''Edmonson'' extended the court's ...

'' (1991) that the ''Batson'' prohibition also applies to civil litigants because they are state actors during the

jury selection Jury selection is the selection of the people who will serve on a jury during a jury trial. The group of potential jurors (the "jury pool", also known as the ''venire'') is first selected from among the community using a reasonably random method. ...

process. However, in ''Polk County v. Dodson'', the court had held that a public defender is not a state actor in the context of a lawsuit for inadequate legal representation. McCollum argued that ''Polk County'' was the controlling precedent, so public defenders are not state actors during jury selection. Writing for the court, Justice

Harry Blackmun Harry Andrew Blackmun (November 12, 1908 – March 4, 1999) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 to 1994. Appointed by Republican President Richard Nixon, Blac ...

disagreed. Blackmun found that whether a public defender is a state actor "depends on the nature and context of the function he is performing."''McCollum'', 505 U.S. at 54. Just as he is a state actor in the context of personnel decisions like hiring and firing attorneys in his office, a public defender is a state actor in the context of peremptory challenges. Like in ''Edmonson'', Blackmun found that race-based peremptory challenges by the defendant violate the

Equal Protection Clause The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal ...

and are therefore unconstitutional.

References

External links

* {{Equal protection and criminal procedure, jury, state=expanded United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Rehnquist Court Batson challenge case law 1992 in United States case law

See also

References

Further reading

External links