J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B. 1994

• Author: Daniel Brannen, Richard Hanes, Elizabeth Shaw
• Pages: 398-402

Contenidos

• Jury of His Female Peers.
• Equal Protection Includes Men and Women.
• Suggestions for further reading.

Page 398

Petitioner: J.E.B.

Respondent: Alabama ex rel. T.B.

Petitioner's Claim: That by striking men from his jury, Alabama violated his constitutional rights.

Chief Lawyer for Petitioner: John F. Porter III

Chief Lawyer for Respondent: Lois B. Brasfield

Justices for the Court: Harry A. Blackmun, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens

Justices Dissenting: William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas

Date of Decision: April 19, 1994

Decision: The Supreme Court sent J.E.B.'s case back to the trial court to determine whether Alabama had gender-neutral reasons for striking men from the jury.

Significance: With J.E.B., the Supreme Court said striking jurors because of their gender violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The American system of justice uses jury trials. A jury is a group of citizens, usually numbering twelve, that hears and decides a legal case. Juries are supposed to be impartial, which means fair, neutral, and open-minded.

Page 399

The use of impartial juries allows parties to be judged fairly by their peers from the community.

Selecting a jury for a case is a two-stage process. In the first stage, the court creates a large pool of people from the community to serve as jurors. This pool is called a venire. In the second stage, the court and lawyers select twelve people from the venire to be the jury for a specific case. During this stage the lawyers for both parties get to make jury challenges. A jury challenge allows the parties to exclude specific people from the jury.

There are two kinds of jury challenges. A challenge "for cause" happens when a party has a good reason to believe a juror might not be able to decide a case fairly. For example, if a juror is one litigant's brother, the other side can use a for cause challenge to strike the juror from the jury. There is no limit to the number of for cause challenges a party can make during jury selection.

The second kind of challenge is called a peremptory challenge. Each party gets a limited number of peremptory challenges. They allow the parties to exclude jurors who the lawyers feel will be against their cases. Traditionally, a lawyer could use peremptory challenges without giving a good reason. All he needed was a hunch that a potential juror would rule against his...