''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 Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...

held that a criminal ''defendant'' cannot make peremptory challenges based solely on race. The court had previously held in ''

Batson v. Kentucky ''Batson v. Kentucky'', 476 U.S. 79 (1986), was a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court ruling that a prosecutor's use of a peremptory challenge in a criminal case—the di ...

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

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