David F. Johnson co-authored a paper entitled “Voir Dire (In a Post Covid World)” with Jason Smith of the Law Offices of Jason Smith for the State Bar of Texas’s Business Disputes Course, held in Austin, Texas, on September...more
The holding in Batson v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 79 (1986), that racial discrimination has no place in jury selection, continues to generate caselaw. As noted in a prior blog post, the Supreme Court of North Carolina had never...more
In Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prevents prosecutors in criminal cases from exercising peremptory challenges to excuse...more
On June 21, 2019, the United States Supreme Court decided Flowers v. Mississippi, No. 17-9572, holding that the state court committed clear error in concluding that the state’s peremptory strike of a black prospective juror...more
Thanks to Batson and associated cases, we now have an uneasy working rule on voir dire in U.S. courtrooms: In exercising peremptory strikes, you can pick and choose on any basis…other than discriminatory ones. Basing strikes...more
In United States v. Altareb, 17-1717, the Second Circuit (Sack, Parker, Chin) issued a summary order affirming a conviction for, inter alia, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and bulk cash smuggling. ...more
On May 23, 2016, the United States Supreme Court decided Foster v. Chatman, No. 14-8349, holding that it was clearly erroneous for a state habeas court to decide that a criminal defendant failed to show purposeful...more