What Does It Take to Succeed on a Batson Claim in North Carolina?

A “peremptory strike” is a tool used by lawyers to exercise control over who is seated on a trial jury. When selecting a jury, attorneys may use peremptory strikes to remove a certain number of potential jurors for any reason at all, other than race and gender. Since lawyers typically do not have to explain the reasons behind their peremptory strikes, they “constitute a jury selection practice that permits those to discriminate who are of a mind to discriminate.” Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 96 (1986), quoting Avery v. Georgia, 345 U.S. 559, 562 (1953). In the 1986 case of Batson v. Kentucky, the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed that peremptory strikes motivated by race violate the Equal Protection Clause; ever since then, challenges to racially motivated jury selection have been referred to as “Batson challenges.” Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986). (For an excellent telling of James Batson’s story and the legacy of this decision, check out the More Perfect Podcast, Object Anyway.) The approach developed by the Batson court was intended to lower the burden of proof for claims of racial discrimination in jury selection, a practice the United States Supreme Court had already recognized as unconstitutional for over a century. See Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1880). Before Batson, the governing standard required evidence of a pattern of discriminatory jury selection over a number of cases; it was not sufficient to demonstrate discrimination in the selection of the defendant’s jury alone. See Swain v. [...]