Justin J. Fair v. Louisiana

Jury venires in Assumption Parish, Louisiana are not a fair cross section of the community. To circumvent state law – which requires a pre-trial written objection and hearing – the courts withhold information such as race, gender, or age from the venire list and, thereafter, provide the venire list to defendant the morning of trial. Disparities in the racial, age, and gender make-up of the venire are revealed only when the prospective jurors are observed at trial. Is the court’s barrier to a timely venire list a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that deprives a defendant of his right to a fair and impartial truly representative jury under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution? Second, the Constitution forbids striking even a single prospective juror for a discriminatory purpose. Does the stark evidence of the prosecutor’s discriminatory use of peremptory challenges to excuse four of five African Americans violate the prima facie rule of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986) which requires the state to provide race neutral reasons for the exclusions so as to ensure the defendant’s fair trial right by an impartial jury under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution?