Lockhart v. McCree

Petitioner
A. L. Lockhart
Respondent
Ardia V. McCree
Petitioner's Claim
That the removal of prospective jurors who oppose the death penalty is a violation of a defendant's constitutional rights.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
John Steven Clark
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Samuel R. Gross
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger, Sandra Day O'Connor, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William H. Rehnquist (writing for the Court), Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, John Paul Stevens
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
5 May 1986
Decision
That the removal of prospective jurors who oppose capital punishment is not unconstitutional.
Significance
The Supreme Court held that a court's decision to remove potential jurors before a trial because they state their opposition to the death penalty does notviolate the requirement that juries represent a fair cross section of the community.
Ardia V. McCree was on trial for murder in Arkansas. He faced a capital charge, meaning he would be executed if convicted. Before the trial started, the judge removed from the pool of potential jurors all those who stated that theycould not under any circumstance vote to impose the death penalty. The jurythat did see the trial voted to convict McCree and sentenced him to life in prison without parole. McCree appealed the conviction in a state appeals court, but his appeal was denied.
McCree then took his case to federal district court. He claimed that the "death qualification" imposed on the jurors had resulted in an impartial jury, thus denying him his right to a fair trial under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. These amendments state that a jury must be composed of a fair representation of the community.
The Lower Courts Rule
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas ruled in favor of McCree. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed this ruling. In its decision, it concluded that there was enough evidence to suggest that excluding anti-death penalty persons from jury pools makes the resultingjury more likely to convict a defendant. A.L. Lockhart, the director of the Arkansas Department of Correction, appealed this decision to the U.S. SupremeCourt.
The Majority's Argument
The majority rejected McCree's claim that the "death qualification" results in impartial juries, pointing to flaws in the evidence used by the lower courts to assert the opposite. The majority went on to point out that the same jury would have been chosen even had no "death qualifying" questions been askedof them. Besides, both parties in the case had conceded that the individual jurors in this case had been impartial.
On the question of the Sixth Amendment, the majority ruled that the constitutional rule that a jury must represent a "fair cross section" of the communitydid not apply in this case. Furthermore, even if it had, the majority refused to categorize death penalty opponents as the kind of "distinctive group" that cannot be excluded from juries. According to the majority, the term "distinctive groups" was meant to indicate race, gender, or national origin, not groups of people with shared opinions or political beliefs. It would be wildlyimpractical, according to the majority, for judges to spend time and energy balancing out different viewpoints and backgrounds on a jury.
Finally, there was the issue of the "two stage" jury. Here, the majority ruled that state prosecutors have a proper interest in making sure they can get asingle jury to decide on both the evidence in the case and on whether to seek the death penalty if the defendant is convicted. Therefore, it is permissible for them to exclude opponents of the death penalty from the panel.
The Dissent
Three justices disagreed with the Court's ruling. Justice Marshall wrote thedissent, joined by Justice Brennan and Justice Stevens. In their opinion, theexclusion of death penalty opponents from a jury gave the prosecution an unfair advantage in the trial. They agreed with the lower courts' determinationthat juries which have been "death qualified" are more likely to convict.
The dissenters raised some other important issues as well. For one, they argued that "death qualification" results in a disproportionate number of minorities on juries, since minorities are more inclined to oppose the death penalty. Also, the dissenters refused to accept the majority's argument that the state has a right to obtain one jury for both the "guilt" and "penalty" phases of a capital trial. In the dissenters' view, this interest cannot be deemed more important than the right of the defendant to a fair trial under the Sixthand Fourteenth Amendments.
The Court seemed to be switching gears in regard to its views on the allowance of death qualification for prospective jurors, as Lockhart v. McCreerepresented a modification of an earlier Supreme Court decision--the 1968 case of Witherspoon v. Illinois. In that case, the Court ruled that courts cannot select juries that are unusually willing to sentence a defendant todeath. Thus, Lockhart v. McCree represents an important shift of direction in the appointing of jury members on murder trials.
Related Cases

• Hoyt v. Florida, 368 U.S. 57 (1961).
  
• Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145 (1968).
  
• Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510 (1968).
  
• Bumper v. North Carolina, 391 U.S. 543 (1968).
  
• Peters v. Kiff, 407 U.S. 493 (1972).
  
• Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976).
  
• Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262 (1976).
  
• Castaneda v. Partida, 430 U.S. 482 (1977).
  
• Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586 (1978).
  
• Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357 (1979).