Batson v. Kentucky

Batson v. Kentucky is presented as a major change in the legal challenge to racially discriminatory jury selection: it gave defendants a more direct way to contest prosecutors’ use of peremptory strikes to remove prospective jurors because of race. Its promise was real but limited. It confronted a practice that had survived earlier constitutional rulings, while leaving the courtroom struggle over whether a challenge would be heard—and whether the rule would alter the jury actually seated—to judges and advocates.

The practice the ruling confronted

For decades, formally recognized constitutional protections had not ended the exclusion of Black people from juries. Strauder v. West Virginia had ruled in the 1880s that excluding Black people from jury service was unconstitutional, yet all-white juries remained common. Later, court procedures and local practices continued to narrow Black participation: jury rolls were often drawn from voting lists that had excluded African Americans, and local commissions used open-ended standards such as being “intelligent and upright” to keep Black people and women off jury lists.

Even when Black prospective jurors were summoned, prosecutors could use peremptory strikes to remove them without giving a reason. A mid-1960s Supreme Court ruling had held that racially discriminatory use of these strikes was unconstitutional, but the evidentiary standard for proving discrimination was so demanding that no challenge had succeeded in the following twenty years. Striking all or nearly all Black prospective jurors therefore continued with little practical interruption.

What Batson changed

In 1986, Batson v. Kentucky made it possible to challenge prosecutors more directly about whether their peremptory strikes were racially discriminatory. The decision offered hope to Black defendants who, including in counties with Black populations of 40 or 50 percent, still frequently faced all-white juries, especially in death-penalty cases. The change made jury selection more contestable; it did not guarantee that racial minorities would actually serve.

The ruling also changed the strategic landscape for prosecutors. Ted Pearson, the district attorney pursuing Walter McMillian, knew that experienced civil-rights lawyers J. L. Chestnut and Bruce Boynton would be prepared to object to discriminatory jury selection. The account describes Batson as forcing prosecutors to find more creative ways to exclude Black jurors, underscoring the distance between making a practice legally challengeable and dismantling it in court.

The rule in McMillian’s trial

The stakes were especially pronounced in Monroe County, which was 40 percent Black. In 1987, all forty elected district attorneys in Alabama were white, despite the state having sixteen majority-Black counties. Legislative arrangements had also maintained white majorities in judicial circuits that included majority-Black counties. This political and institutional setting formed the backdrop to Pearson’s concern about Batson—and to his confidence that the objection might not change the outcome.

At McMillian’s trial, jury selection lasted only a few hours. Pearson used peremptory strikes to exclude all but one of the handful of African Americans summoned for jury service. McMillian’s lawyers objected, but the judge summarily dismissed their complaints. The episode gives the rule’s central tension a concrete form: a new avenue for challenging racial exclusion existed, yet McMillian still faced a jury from which nearly all Black prospective jurors had been removed, and his objection did not stop the selection process.

Scope and significance

Batson v. Kentucky sits within a longer history in which legal protections against racial exclusion repeatedly coexisted with practices that preserved it. Earlier rulings had declared exclusion unconstitutional, but voting restrictions, jury-list procedures, discretionary strikes, and judicial responses continued to shape who could participate. Batson offered a more usable challenge to one part of that system, while the experience of McMillian’s trial shows why a rule’s existence cannot be mistaken for its effective enforcement.

The book connects jury selection to the racial history of criminal justice rather than treating it as a technical detail separate from the case. For McMillian, the nearly all-white jury was part of the setting in which a prosecution based on disputed testimony proceeded despite community members’ belief in his innocence. Batson made such selection more open to challenge; the trial demonstrates that formal access to a challenge and meaningful protection against discriminatory exclusion were not the same thing.