Compare And Contrast Batson Vs Kentucky

1) On August 28, 1986, a woman named Queen Madge White was found dead in her home in Rome, Georgia. She was a 79-year-old widow and was found to be beaten, sexually assaulted, and strangled to death. Her home had also been burglarized. Timothy Foster, an 18-year-old black male, confessed to the crime and officers recovered some of the stolen items from Foster’s home. The State subsequently indicted him for malice, murder, and burglary and the jury that was selected convicted him of capital murder and assigned the death penalty. However, when the jury selection process of his trial was underway, the State used peremptory challenges to strike every black prospective juror that was qualified- four to be exact. This selection process had two phases-

During the trial, however, the state of Georgia used peremptory strikes to remove all qualified black jurors. Foster filed a Batson claim stating that the strikes were racially motivated, which violated Batson v. Kentucky, but this was rejected by the trial court. The trial court applied the principle of res judicata to support this rejection. Foster then tried to lodge another Batson claim, this time as a motion for a new trial, which was denied and the denial was affirmed by the Georgia Supreme Court. Following this denial, Foster filed another Batson claim with the Superior Court of Butts county, Georgia seeking a writ of habeas corpus. This court denied his relief, and the Supreme Court of Georgia declined him a Certificate of Probable Cause, which he would need to attempt to appeal. During the waiting period of his attempt to obtain a writ of habeas corpus, Foster was given access to the records of the jury selection process from his initial trial through the Georgia Open Records Act. These records provided him with evidence that showed the purposeful discrimination of the stricken jurors, but the court denied that he had proven this. The Supreme Court of the United States held that it had the jurisdiction to review the lower courts’ decision citing Harris v. Reed and Ake v. Oklahoma. Reviewing the evidence submitted by Foster, the Court concluded that the strikes had been driven by race citing Snyder v. Louisiana, as well as the fact that the evidence also showed that the conditions met by the black jurors that resulted in them being stricken were also met by white jurors that were deemed qualified to serve, suggesting purposeful discrimination (Miller-El v. Dretke). Following these precedents, the Court reversed and