Taylor v. Louisiana

His trial was going to begin at the 22nd Judicial District of Louisiana on 13 April 1972. The day before his trial was to begin, Taylor asked the court to throw out the list of available jurors. The law had systematically excluded women from that summoned group, Taylor claimed, by Article 402 of the Louisiana Code of Criminal Procedure, which provided: "A woman shall not be selected for jury service unless she has previously filed with the clerk of court of the parish in which she resides a written declaration of her desire to be subject to jury service."

Because of this requirement, few jurors in St. Tammany Parish were women, even though 53 percent of the people who met eligibility requirements were female. More specifically, there were no women among the 175 people drawn for jury service during the criminal term in which Taylor's case would be tried, a situation he claimed violated his right to an impartial jury by a jury of his peers--made up of both women and men.

The court rejected Taylor's motion on the same day he made it and the trial continued. Convicted of aggravated kidnapping by the all-male jury, the court sentenced Taylor to death. Taylor then appealed to the state's supreme court to review whether his motion to quash the list of jurors summoned should have been granted. When Louisiana's Supreme Court ruled that the jury list had been selected by constitutional means, Taylor appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.