''Griffith v. Kentucky'', 479 U.S. 314 (1987), is a case decided by the

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 turn on question ...

Background

Randall Lamont Griffith, who is African American, was indicted for first-degree robbery in 1982 at the Circuit Court of

Jefferson County, Kentucky Jefferson County is a county located in the north central portion of the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2020 census, the population was 782,969. It is the most populous county in the commonwealth (with more than twice the population of sec ...

. This Supreme Court decision concerned the retrospective application of judge-made rules. Specifically, the Court had to decide whether a prosecutor's use of

peremptory challenge The right of peremptory challenge is a legal right in jury selection for the attorneys to reject a certain number of potential jurors or judges without stating a reason. The idea behind peremptory challenges is that if both parties have contributed ...

s to exclude black jurors, combined with his call to the jury clerk, violated the black petitioner's right to an impartial jury. The Court was called upon to decide whether its previous decision 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 ...

'' was applicable to litigation that was not yet final or that was pending on direct review (that is, on direct appeal rather than a collateral attack such as by petition for a writ of

habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a legal procedure invoking the jurisdiction of a court to review the unlawful detention or imprisonment of an individual, and request the individual's custodian (usually a prison official) to ...

) when ''Batson'' was decided. Both ''Griffith'' and ''Batson'' concern trials in the same courthouse.

Question

Could retroactive Supreme Court decisions be applied selectively to cases pending direct review or not yet final?

Holding

The Court held that after a new rule had been decided in a particular case, "the integrity of judicial review requires that we apply that rule to all similar cases pending on direct review." The Court reasoned that selective application of new rules violated the principle of treating similarly situated defendants on an equal basis. The Court also refused to make an exception to the rule of retroactivity in cases where there was a "clean break" with past precedent.

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 1987 in United States case law Jefferson County, Kentucky History of Louisville, Kentucky 1980s in Louisville, Kentucky

Background

Question

Holding

See also

External links