Introduction

Impartial Juries and Batson

Introduction

The Sixth Amendment promises that in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to trial "by an impartial jury."¹ The text names a goal and says nothing about how to reach it. It does not say how jurors are summoned, how they are questioned, or who may send one home before the trial begins. Those mechanics come from other sources. The Fourteenth Amendment makes the guarantee binding on state prosecutions, and Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 24 supplies the procedures for federal trials only, so a state court follows its own rules while remaining subject to the same constitutional floor.

The scene shows the three tools through which the impartiality goal is pursued in practice. Voir dire, the questioning of prospective jurors, produces the information on which every later decision rests. A challenge for cause asks the judge to remove a juror whose answers show an inability to be impartial, and it is not capped at a fixed number because it must rest on a reason the judge accepts. A peremptory challenge removes a juror with no stated reason and no judicial approval, and each side receives only a limited allotment. Rule 24 organizes all three in federal court. The peremptory strike is where the guarantee comes under the most strain, because a power exercised without explanation can be exercised for a discriminatory purpose. The Equal Protection Clause answers that risk, and in {{case_placeholder}} Batson v. Kentucky the Court held that it prohibits the use of peremptory challenges to exclude jurors on the basis of race.²

This chapter follows a single jury through that sequence. It starts with the constitutional guarantee, moves through the examination and challenge machinery that Rule 24 structures, and ends with the limit that Batson places on peremptory strikes and the way courts apply it. The first question comes before any juror is asked a word: what does the guarantee of an impartial jury require of the pool from which jurors are drawn, and of the people who are finally seated?