Lockhart v. McCree - 476 U.S. 162, 106 S. Ct. 1758 (1986)

Rule:

The Constitution does not prohibit the states from "death qualifying" juries in capital cases.

Facts:

In a criminal prosecution in an Arkansas state court for capital felony murder, the trial judge at voir dire removed for cause, over the defendant's objection, those prospective jurors who stated that they could not under any circumstances vote for the imposition of the death penalty. The jury convicted the defendant of capital felony murder but rejected the state's request for the death penalty, instead setting the punishment at life imprisonment without parole. The conviction was affirmed on direct appeal, and the defendant’s petition for state post-conviction relief was denied. The defendant then filed a federal habeas corpus petition raising the claim that "death qualification" or the removal for cause of the so-called "Witherspoon-excludable" prospective jurors violated his right, under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution, to have his guilt or innocence determined by an impartial jury selected from a representative cross section of the community. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas granted habeas corpus relief, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, finding that there was substantial evidentiary support for the District Court's conclusion that the removal for cause of "Witherspoon-excludables" resulted in conviction-prone juries, affirmed on the ground that such removal for cause violated the defendant's constitutional right to a jury selected from a fair cross section of the community. The Arkansas Department of Corrections sought review. 

Issue:

Did the removal for cause of "Witherspoon-excludables" violate the defendant’s constitutional right to a jury selected from a fair cross section of the community? 

Answer:

No.

Conclusion:

The Court held that the Federal Constitution did not prohibit the removal for cause, prior to the guilt phase of the defendant's bifurcated capital trial, of prospective jurors whose opposition to the death penalty was so strong that it would have prevented or substantially impaired the performance of their duties as jurors at the sentencing phase of the trial, in that the "death-qualification" of the jury did not violate the requirement of the Sixth Amendment that a jury must represent a fair cross section of the community, because the requirement did not apply to the selection of a petit jury, and because, even if it applied, the prospective jurors so excluded at voir dire did not constitute the distinctive group that, under the fair cross-section requirement, may not be systematically excluded from juries. Moreover, the Court held that the removal for cause did not violate the defendant's right under the Sixth Amendment to an impartial jury, because the individual jurors who served at his trial were concededly impartial, and because the removal of the prospective jurors did not slant the jury toward conviction but, on the other hand, served the state's proper interest in obtaining a single jury that could impartially decide all of the issues in his case.