Peremptory Challenge
- The state of West Virginia had a law that only white men were able to serve on the jury
- Strauder should have never been denied his rights
- The fourteenth Amendment came into order in 1868
- What took so long for the West Virginian Supreme Court to understand that Straud's rights were violated?
"Mind Mapping" Method
Harms Found
This challenge gives lawyers or a defendant a chance to object the proposed juror
- The people apart of the jury had already entered with biased thoughts
- This was a systematic discrimination
- The Strauder case showed that the African American population were excluded from participating as jurors
- The decision were going to be biased of course because there was only one race that had deep hatred towards black people
- So many people were denied of having their own race apart of their jury.
History
- What race has been the staple of the criminal justice system?
- Did the Supreme Court allow this to become a reoccuring problem?
- Isn't the selection of a jury supposed to be among your peers?
Marshall
A continuance
People v. McDonald
Gamble V. State
- Three black men were prosecuted for kidnapping and rape
- At trial prosecution exercised sixteen of its peremptory challenges to remove all of the blacks in the pool of potential jurors
- This was ruled as a violation of Batson because the prosecution could not come up with a nonracial reason
- This says a lot about the older cases presented
- This should have been under review
- I disagreed with his logic because he believes that all races are burdened by the same laws
- Everyone is supposed to be burdened by the same laws if each race was actually equal
- Prosecutors continued to use the Peremptory challenge
- There have been many of cases that fell within the violations of Batson
- The prosecutor used all of his peremptory challenges to remove all of the black jurors
- Gamble was sentenced to death by an all white jury
- Although, the lawyer had nonracial reasons it still did not excuse the discrimination of the potential jurors
- I agree with Marshall because he believes that discriminatory peremptory challenges are not fair.
- It gives the prosecutor an easy way out instead of having a fair trial with peers of different races
Cause and Effect
Questions to ask
- What is the proper way to dispose of the Peremptory Challenges?
- Peremptory Challenges clearly had an effect on discrimination, how could this have been avoided?
- Are the Peremptory Challenges another way of slavery?
Opinions play a huge part
- States started using the excuse that only a few African Americans are intelligent, experienced, and moral enough
- This is really sad because black people were oppressed so much
- Education wasn't allowed among black people if a black person learned how to read it was in secrecy
Conclusion
- Caucasian men has been the root to a lot of our habits in America.
- The criminal justice system was adopted by the United States from the British.
- African Americans never had a place in the criminal justice system only on the criminal side
- I feel like Peremptory Challenges was another way of slavery or keeping black people oppressed
- All of the cases that were in the earlier part of the presentation had a pattern that corrupted the nation even more
- The challenges caused a wave of oppression amongst the blacks
- It is also clear to see that each branch of government worked with each other
- Prosecutors overused the racially discriminated peremptory
- This was a heavily used argument because it always benefited the prosecutors
- The Peremptory Challenge was used as a cheat code to oppress
- The main focus is to let the accused have a speedy and public trial and only have an impartial jury where the crime took place
- This Amendment doesn't protect the equality amongst the races in the jury
- He was convicted of burglary
- His pool included four blacks
- The prosecutor used four of his six peremptory challenges to remove all four of the blacks
- This was a spark that repetition was heavy in the criminal justice system
Reoccuring Patterns
- Swain v. Alabama
- Commonwealth v. Soares
- McCray v. New York
Commonwealth v. Soares
Swain v. Alabama
- I agree with Chief Warren to a certain extent because he felt like defense and prosecutorial peremptory challenges were constitutionally required
- There should be an equal amount of people by race
- Everyone who has not committed a crime should be allowed to participate
- Racial discrimination has a role to play within the government
- This stems from the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches
- They all have a role to play
- Thirteen black ,em were in a pool of jurors
- The Peremptory challenge took twelve black people out
- The only black person was a foreman of the judge and voted to convict the accused
- Swain was sentenced to death
- A small number of black people were eligible for grand and petit juries
- There wasn't an equal amount of black people
- There were four or five on the grand jury, however, only two served
- This is a repeating pattern
McCray v. New York
- During his first trial McCray was unable to reach a verdict
- There were three black people on the jury that voted for his acquittal.
- During the second trial all seven black people were excluded
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger