The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case regard­ing the exclu­sion of cap­i­tal jurors to its dock­et this term. The case, Uttecht v. Brown, No. 06 – 413, involves the removal of a poten­tial juror from a death penal­ty tri­al because of the juror’s views about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In this case, dur­ing jury selec­tion in a Washington state mur­der case, the tri­al judge dis­missed a juror because of state­ments he made about his will­ing­ness to impose a death sen­tence. After the Washington Supreme Court upheld the judge’s dis­missal of the juror, the defen­dant request­ed habeas cor­pus relief in fed­er­al court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that exclud­ing a juror is allowed only if it is clear that the juror would not fol­low the law. The U.S. Supreme Court will review whether the Ninth Circuit suf­fi­cient­ly deferred to the tri­al judge’s obser­va­tions and applied the statu­to­ry pre­sump­tion of cor­rect­ness to the state court ruling. 

(SCOTUSblog​.com, January 12, 2007). Read the peti­tion for cer­tio­rari. See Supreme Court. See also DPIC’s report Blind Justice: Juries Deciding Life and Death With Only Half the Truth.

Citation Guide