Bryan Christopher Bell v. North Carolina

Courts have long recognized and honored their duty to root out the impacts of stereotype-based decision-making wherever it arises. They have not hesitated to overturn criminal convictions upon discovering discrimination on the basis of race or gender in jury selection. In contrast the North Carolina courts have abdicated their responsibilities, leaving the state to run roughshod over the equal protection rights of its citizens. Here, there is no question that the prosecutor struck a potential juror because she was a woman. Instead of remedying the odious error, the Supreme Court of North Carolina rewrote the state’s postconviction statutes to bar relief. At the petitioners’ joint trial, the prosecutor responded to a Batson objection for the juror in question. He offered a single explanation: her arthritis. During unrelated proceedings in another case, the same prosecutor was asked to explain his strike of that juror. He insisted the strike was not because she was Black; it was because she was a woman. When Petitioners then raised a claim of gender-based discrimination based on this new revelation, the post-conviction court, after an evidentiary hearing, found that the strike was based on intentional discrimination. However, the Supreme Court of North Carolina refused to grant relief on novel procedural grounds, continuing a long line of decisions nullifying this Court’s cases on discrimination in jury selection. Two justices issued a blistering concurrence, affirming on stare decisis grounds, but explaining that they could not discern what the petitioners “could have done differently to achieve relief under our precedents, even . . . where a prosecutor has admitted under oath that he struck a juror based on her gender.” In their view, the state has “effectively overruled Batson and J.E.B.” This case presents the following question: Whether this Court may review the merits of an undisputable violation of J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., 511 U.S. 127 (1994) where the state court applied a procedural bar that is neither independent of federal law nor adequate to bar review.