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Subject: 89-5011 -- OPINION, POWERS v. OHIO




NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in
the preliminary print of the United States Reports.  Readers are requested
to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States,
Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in
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press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES


No. 89-5011



LARRY JOE POWERS, PETITIONER v. OHIO


on writ of certiorari to the court of appeals of ohio, franklin county

[April 1, 1991]



    Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court.
    Jury service is an exercise of responsible citizenship by all members
of the community, including those who otherwise might not have the
opportunity to contribute to our civic life.  Congress recognized this over
a century ago in the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which made it a criminal
offense to exclude persons from jury service on account of their race.  See
18 U. S. C. MDRV 243.  In a trilogy of cases decided soon after enactment
of this prohibition, our Court confirmed the validity of the statute, as
well as the broader constitutional imperative of race neutrality in jury
selection.  See Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303 (1880); Virginia
v. Rives, 100 U. S. 313 (1880); Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339 (1880).
In the many times we have confronted the issue since those cases, we have
not questioned the premise that racial discrimination in the qualification
or selection of jurors offends the dignity of persons and the integrity of
the courts.  Despite the clarity of these commands to eliminate the taint
of racial discrimination in the administration of justice, allegations of
bias in the jury selection process persist.  In this case, petitioner
alleges race discrimination in the prosecution's use of peremptory
challenges.  Invoking the Equal Protection Clause and federal statutory
law, and relying upon well-established principles of standing, we hold that
a criminal defendant may object to race-based exclusions of jurors effected
through peremptory challenges whether or not the defendant and the excluded
juror share the same race.

I
    Petitioner Larry Joe Powers, a white man, was indicted in Franklin
County, Ohio on two counts of aggravated murder and one count of attempted
aggravated murder.  Each count also included a separate allegation that
petitioner had a firearm while committing the offense.  Powers pleaded not
guilty and invoked his right to a jury trial.
    In the jury selection process, Powers objected when the prosecutor
exercised his first peremptory challenge to remove a black venireperson.
Powers requested the trial court to compel the prosecutor to explain, on
the record, his reasons for excluding a black person.  The trial court
denied the request and excused the juror.  The State proceeded to use nine
more peremptory challenges, six of which removed black venirepersons from
the jury.  Each time the prosecution challenged a black prospective juror,
Powers renewed his objections, citing our decision in Batson v. Kentucky,
476 U. S. 79 (1986).  His objections were overruled.  The record does not
indicate that race was somehow implicated in the crime or the trial; nor
does it reveal whether any black persons sat on petitioner's petit jury or
if any of the nine jurors the petitioner excused by peremptory challenges
were black persons.
    The impaneled jury convicted Powers on counts of murder, aggravated
murder, and attempted aggravated murder, each with the firearm
specifications, and the trial court sentenced him to a term of imprisonment
of 53 years to life.  Powers appealed his conviction to the Ohio Court of
Appeals, contending that the prosecutor's discriminatory use of
peremptories violated the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a fair cross
section in his petit jury, the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection
Clause, and Article I, 15 10 and 16, of the Ohio Constitution.  Powers
contended that his own race was irrelevant to the right to object to the
prosecution's peremptory challenges.  The Court of Appeals affirmed the
conviction, and the Supreme Court of Ohio dismissed Powers' appeal on the
ground that it presented no substantial constitutional question.
    Petitioner sought review before us, renewing his Sixth Amendment fair
cross section and Fourteenth Amendment equal protection claims.  While the
petition for certiorari was pending, we decided Holland v. Illinois, 493 U.
S. --- (1990).  In Holland it was alleged the prosecution had used its
peremptory challenges to exclude from the jury members of a race other than
the defendant's.  We held the Sixth Amendment did not restrict the
exclusion of a racial group at the peremptory challenge stage.  Five
members of the Court there said a defendant might be able to make the
objection on equal protection grounds.  See id., at --- (Kennedy, J.,
concurring); id., at --- (Marshall, J., dissenting, joined by Brennan and
Blackmun, JJ.); id., at --- (Stevens, J., dissenting).  After our decision
in Holland, we granted Powers' petition for certiorari limited to the
question whether, based on the Equal Protection Clause, a white defendant
may object to the prosecution's peremptory challenges of black
venirepersons.  493 U. S. --- (1990).  We now reverse and remand.

II
    For over a century, this Court has been unyielding in its position that
a defendant is denied equal protection of the laws when tried before a jury
from which members of his or her race have been excluded by the State's
purposeful conduct.  "The Equal Protection Clause guarantees the defendant
that the State will not exclude members of his race from the jury venire on
account of race, Strauder, [100 U. S.,] at 305, or on the false assumption
that members of his race as a group are not qualified to serve as jurors,
see Norris v. Alabama, 294 U. S. 587, 599 (1935); Neal v. Delaware, 103 U.
S. 370, 397 (1881)."  Batson, supra, at 86.  Although a defendant has no
right to a "petit jury composed in whole or in part of persons of [the
defendant's] own race," Strauder, 100 U. S., at 305, he or she does have
the right to be tried by a jury whose members are selected by
nondiscriminatory criteria.
    We confronted the use of peremptory challenges as a device to exclude
jurors because of their race for the first time in Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.
S. 202 (1965).  Swain involved a challenge to the so-called struck jury
system, a procedure designed to allow both the prosecution and the defense
a maximum number of peremptory challenges.  The venire in noncapital cases
started with about 35 potential jurors, from which the defense and the
prosecution alternated with strikes until a petit panel of 12 jurors
remained.  The defendant in Swain, who was himself black, alleged that the
prosecutor had used the struck jury system and its numerous peremptory
challenges for the purpose of excluding black persons from his petit jury.
In finding that no constitutional harm was alleged, the Court in Swain
sought to reconcile the command of racial neutrality in jury selection with
the utility, and the tradition, of peremptory challenges.  The Court
declined to permit an equal protection claim premised on a pattern of jury
strikes in a particular case, but acknowledged that proof of systematic
exclusion of black persons through the use of peremptories over a period of
time might establish an equal protection violation.  Id., at 222-228.
    We returned to the problem of a prosecutor's discriminatory use of
peremptory challenges in Batson v. Kentucky.  There, we considered a
situation similar to the one before us today, but with one exception:
Batson, the defendant who complained that black persons were being excluded
from his petit jury, was himself black.  During the voir dire examination
of the venire for Batson's trial, the prosecutor used his peremptory
challenges to strike all four black persons on the venire, resulting in a
petit jury composed only of white persons.  Batson's counsel moved without
success to discharge the jury before it was impaneled on the ground that
the prosecutor's removal of black venirepersons violated his rights under
the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments.  Relying upon the Equal Protection
Clause alone, we overruled Swain to the extent it foreclosed objections to
the discrimi natory use of peremptories in the course of a specific trial.
476 U. S., at 90-93.  In Batson we held that a defendant can raise an equal
protection challenge to the use of peremptories at his own trial by showing
that the prosecutor used them for the purpose of excluding members of the
defendant's race.  Id., at 96.
    The State contends that our holding in the case now before us must be
limited to the circumstances prevailing in Batson and that in equal
protection analysis the race of the objecting defendant constitutes a
relevant precondition for a Batson challenge.  Because Powers is white, the
State argues, he cannot object to the exclusion of black prospective
jurors.  This limitation on a defendant's right to object conforms neither
with our accepted rules of standing to raise a constitutional claim nor
with the substantive guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause and the
policies underlying federal statutory law.
    In Batson, we spoke of the harm caused when a defendant is tried by a
tribunal from which members of his own race have been excluded.  But we did
not limit our discussion in Batson to that one aspect of the harm caused by
the violation.  Batson "was designed `to serve multiple ends,' " only one
of which was to protect individual defendants from discrimination in the
selection of jurors.  Allen v. Hardy, 478 U. S. 255, 259 (1986) (per
curiam) (quoting Brown v. Louisiana, 447 U. S. 323, 329 (1980)).  Batson
recognized that a prosecutor's discriminatory use of peremptory challenges
harms the excluded jurors and the community at large.  476 U. S., at 87.
    The opportunity for ordinary citizens to participate in the
administration of justice has long been recognized as one of the principal
justifications for retaining the jury system.  See Duncan v. Louisiana, 391
U. S. 145, 147-158 (1968).  In Balzac v. Porto Rico, 258 U. S. 298 (1922),
Chief Justice Taft wrote for the Court:

"The jury system postulates a conscious duty of participation in the
machinery of justice. . . .  One of its greatest benefits is in the
security it gives the people that they, as jurors actual or possible, being
part of the judicial system of the country can prevent its arbitrary use or
abuse."  Id., at 310.


    And, over 150 years ago, Alexis De Tocqueville remarked:

"[T]he institution of the jury raises the people itself, or at least a
class of citizens, to the bench of judicial authority [and] invests the
people, or that class of citizens, with the direction of society.

    . . . . .



    ". . . The jury . . . invests each citizen with a kind of magistracy;
it makes them all feel the duties which they are bound to discharge towards
society; and the part which they take in the Government.  By obliging men
to turn their attention to affairs which are not exclusively their own, it
rubs off that individual egotism which is the rust of society.

    . . . . .



    "I do not know whether the jury is useful to those who are in
litigation; but I am certain it is highly beneficial to those who decide
the litigation; and I look upon it as one of the most efficacious means for
the education of the people which society can employ."  1 Democracy in
America 334-337 (Schocken 1st ed. 1961).


    Jury service preserves the democratic element of the law, as it guards
the rights of the parties and insures continued acceptance of the laws by
all of the people.  See Green v. United States, 356 U. S. 165, 215 (1958)
(Black, J., dissenting).  It "affords ordinary citizens a valuable
opportunity to participate in a process of government, an experience
fostering, one hopes, a respect for law."  Duncan, supra, at 187 (Harlan,
J., dissenting).  Indeed, with the exception of voting, for most citizens
the honor and privilege of jury duty is their most significant opportunity
to participate in the democratic process.
    While States may prescribe relevant qualifications for their jurors,
see Carter v. Jury Comm'n of Greene County, 396 U. S. 320, 332 (1970), a
member of the community may not be excluded from jury service on account of
his or her race.  See Batson, supra, at 84; Swain, 380 U. S., at 203-204;
Carter, supra, at 329-330; Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 328 U. S. 217,
220-221 (1946); Neal v. Delaware, 103 U. S. 370, 386 (1881); Strauder, 100
U. S., at 308.  "Whether jury service be deemed a right, a privilege, or a
duty, the State may no more extend it to some of its citizens and deny it
to others on racial grounds than it may invidiously discriminate in the
offering and withholding of the elective franchise."  Carter, supra, at
330.  Over a century ago, we recognized that:

"The very fact that [members of a particular race] are singled out and
expressly denied . . . all right to participate in the administration of
the law, as jurors, because of their color, though they are citizens, and
may be in other respects fully qualified, is practically a brand upon them,
affixed by the law, an assertion of their inferiority, and a stimulant to
that race prejudice which is an impediment to securing to individuals of
the race that equal justice which the law aims to secure to all others."
Strauder, supra, at 308.


    Discrimination in the jury selection process is the subject of a
federal criminal prohibition, and has been since Congress enacted the Civil
Rights Act of 1875.  The prohibition has been codified at 18 U. S. C. MDRV
243, which provides:

    "No citizen possessing all other qualifications which are or may be
prescribed by law shall be disqualified for service as grand or petit juror
in any court of the United States, or of any State on account of race,
color, or pre vious condition of servitude; and whoever, being an officer
or other person charged with any duty in the selection or summoning of
jurors, excludes or fails to summon any citizen for such cause, shall be
fined not more than $5,000."


    In Peters v. Kiff, 407 U. S. 493 (1972), Justice White spoke of "the
strong statutory policy of MDRV 243, which reflects the central concern of
the Fourteenth Amendment."  Id., at 507 (concurring in judgment).  The
Court permitted a white defendant to challenge the systematic exclusion of
black persons from grand and petit juries.  While Peters did not produce a
single majority opinion, six of the Justices agreed that racial
discrimination in the jury selection process cannot be tolerated and that
the race of the defendant has no relevance to his or her standing to raise
the claim.  See id., at 504-505 (opinion of Marshall, J.); id., at 506-507
(White, J., concurring in judgment).
    Racial discrimination in the selection of jurors in the context of an
individual trial violates these same prohibitions.  A State "may not draw
up its jury lists pursuant to neutral procedures but then resort to
discrimination at `other stages in the selection process.' "  Batson,
supra, at 88 (quoting Avery v. Georgia, 345 U. S. 559, 562 (1953)).  We so
held in Batson, and reaffirmed that holding in Holland.  See 493 U. S., at
---.  In Holland, the Court held that a defendant could not rely on the
Sixth Amendment to object to the ex clusion of members of any distinctive
group at the peremptory challenge stage.  We noted that the peremptory
challenge procedure has acceptance in our legal tradition.  See id., at
---.  On this reasoning we declined to permit an objection to the
peremptory challenge of a juror on racial grounds as a Sixth Amendment
matter.  As the Holland Court made explicit, however, racial exclusion of
prospective jurors violates the overriding command of the Equal Protection
Clause, and "race-based exclusion is no more permissible at the individual
petit jury stage than at the venire stage."  Id., at ---.
    We hold that the Equal Protection Clause prohibits a prosecutor from
using the State's peremptory challenges to exclude otherwise qualified and
unbiased persons from the petit jury solely by reason of their race, a
practice that forecloses a significant opportunity to participate in civic
life.  An in dividual juror does not have a right to sit on any particular
petit jury, but he or she does possess the right not to be excluded from
one on account of race.
    It is suggested that no particular stigma or dishonor results if a
prosecutor uses the raw fact of skin color to determine the objectivity or
qualifications of a juror.  We do not believe a victim of the
classification would endorse this view; the assumption that no stigma or
dishonor attaches contravenes accepted equal protection principles.  Race
cannot be a proxy for determining juror bias or competence.  "A person's
race simply `is unrelated to his fitness as a juror.' "  Batson, supra, at
87 (quoting Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., supra, at 227 (Frankfurter, J.,
dissenting)).  We may not accept as a defense to racial discrimination the
very stereotype the law condemns.
    We reject as well the view that race-based peremptory challenges
survive equal protection scrutiny because members of all races are subject
to like treatment, which is to say that white jurors are subject to the
same risk of peremptory challenges based on race as are all other jurors.
The suggestion that racial classifications may survive when visited upon
all persons is no more authoritative today than the case which advanced the
theorem, Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537 (1896).  This idea has no place
in our modern equal protection jurisprudence.  It is axiomatic that racial
classifications do not become legitimate on the assumption that all persons
suffer them in equal degree.  Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967).

III
    We must consider whether a criminal defendant has standing to raise the
equal protection rights of a juror excluded from service in violation of
these principles.  In the ordinary course, a litigant must assert his or
her own legal rights and interests, and cannot rest a claim to relief
premised on the legal rights or interests of third parties.  United States
Dept. of Labor v. Triplett, 493 U. S. ---, --- (1990); Singleton v. Wulff,
428 U. S. 106 (1976).  This fundamental restriction on our authority admits
of certain, limited ex ceptions.  We have recognized the right of litigants
to bring actions on behalf of third parties, provided three important
criteria are satisfied: the litigant must have suffered an
"injury-in-fact," thus giving him or her a "sufficiently concrete interest"
in the outcome of the issue in dispute, Singleton, supra, at 112; the
litigant must have a close relation to the third party, id., at 113-114;
and there must exist some hindrance to the third party's ability to protect
his or her own interests.  Id., at 115-116.  See also Craig v. Boren, 429
U. S. 190 (1976).  These criteria have been satisfied in cases where we
have permitted criminal defendants to challenge their convictions by
raising the rights of third parties.  See, e. g., Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405
U. S. 438 (1972); Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965); see also
McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420 (1961).  By similar reasoning, we have
permitted litigants to raise third-party rights in order to prevent
possible future prosecution.  See, e. g., Doe v. Bolton, 410 U. S. 179
(1973).
    The discriminatory use of peremptory challenges by the prosecution
causes a criminal defendant cognizable injury, and the defendant has a
concrete interest in challenging the practice.  See Allen v. Hardy, 478 U.
S., at 259 (recognizing a defendant's interest in "neutral jury selection
procedures").  This is not because the individual jurors dismissed by the
prosecution may have been predisposed to favor the defendant; if that were
true, the jurors might have been excused for cause.  Rather, it is because
racial discrimination in the selection of jurors "casts doubt on the
integrity of the judicial process," Rose v. Mitchell, 443 U. S. 545, 556
(1979), and places the fairness of a criminal proceeding in doubt.
    The jury acts as a vital check against wrongful exercise of power by
the State and its prosecutors.  Batson, supra, at 86.  The intrusion of
racial discrimination into the jury selection process damages both the fact
and the perception of this guarantee.  "Jury selection is the primary means
by which a court may enforce a defendant's right to be tried by a jury free
from ethnic, racial, or political prejudice, Rosales-Lopez v. United
States, 451 U. S. 182, 188 (1981); Ham v. South Carolina, 409 U. S. 524
(1973); Dennis v. United States, 339 U. S. 162 (1950), or predisposition
about the defendant's culpability, Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U. S. 717 (1961)."
Gomez v. United States, 490 U. S. 858, 873 (1989).  Active discrimination
by a prosecutor during this process condones violations of the United
States Constitution within the very institution entrusted with its
enforcement, and so invites cynicism respecting the jury's neutrality and
its obligation to adhere to the law.  The cynicism may be aggravated if
race is implicated in the trial, either in a direct way as with an alleged
racial motivation of the defendant or a victim, or in some more subtle
manner as by casting doubt upon the credibility or dignity of a witness, or
even upon the standing or due regard of an attorney who appears in the
cause.
    Unlike the instances where a defendant seeks to object to the
introduction of evidence obtained illegally from a third party, see, e. g.,
United States v. Payner, 447 U. S. 727 (1980), here petitioner alleges that
the primary constitutional violation occurred during the trial itself.  A
prosecutor's wrongful exclusion of a juror by a race-based peremptory
challenge is a constitutional violation committed in open court at the
outset of the proceedings.  The overt wrong, often apparent to the entire
jury panel, casts doubt over the obligation of the parties, the jury, and
indeed the court to adhere to the law throughout the trial of the cause.
The voir dire phase of the trial represents the "jurors' first introduction
to the substantive factual and legal issues in a case."  Gomez, supra, at
874.  The influence of the voir dire process may persist through the whole
course of the trial proceedings.  Ibid.  If the defendant has no right to
object to the prose cutor's improper exclusion of jurors, and if the trial
court has no duty to make a prompt inquiry when the defendant shows, by
adequate grounds, a likelihood of impropriety in the exercise of a
challenge, there arise legitimate doubts that the jury has been chosen by
proper means.  The composition of the trier of fact itself is called in
question, and the irregularity may pervade all the proceedings that
follow.
    The purpose of the jury system is to impress upon the criminal
defendant and the community as a whole that a verdict of conviction or
acquittal is given in accordance with the law by persons who are fair.  The
verdict will not be accepted or understood in these terms if the jury is
chosen by unlawful means at the outset.  Upon these considerations, we find
that a criminal defendant suffers a real injury when the prosecutor
excludes jurors at his or her own trial on account of race.
    We noted in Singleton that in certain circumstances "the relationship
between the litigant and the third party may be such that the former is
fully, or very nearly, as effective a proponent of the right as the
latter."  428 U. S., at 115.  Here, the relation between petitioner and the
excluded jurors is as close as, if not closer than, those we have
recognized to convey third-party standing in our prior cases.  See, e. g.,
Griswold v. Connecticut, supra (Planned Parenthood official and a licensed
physician can raise the constitutional rights of contraceptive users with
whom they had professional relationships); Craig, supra (licensed beer
vendor has standing to raise the equal protection claim of a male customer
challenging a statutory scheme prohibiting the sale of beer to males under
the age of 21 and to females under the age of 18); Triplett, supra
(attorney may challenge an attorney's fees restriction by asserting the due
process rights of the client).  Voir dire permits a party to establish a
relation, if not a bond of trust, with the jurors.  This relation continues
throughout the entire trial and may in some cases extend to the sentencing
as well.
    Both the excluded juror and the criminal defendant have a common
interest in eliminating racial discrimination from the courtroom.  A
venireperson excluded from jury service because of race suffers a profound
personal humiliation heightened by its public character.  The rejected
juror may lose confidence in the court and its verdicts, as may the
defendant if his or her objections cannot be heard.  This congruence of
interests makes it necessary and appropriate for the defendant to raise the
rights of the juror.  And, there can be no doubt that petitioner will be a
motivated, effective advocate for the excluded venirepersons' rights.
Petitioner has much at stake in proving that his jury was improperly
constituted due to an equal protection violation, for we have recognized
that discrimination in the jury selection process may lead to the reversal
of a conviction.  See Batson, supra, at 100; Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S.
254, 264 (1986); Rose v. Mitchell, supra, at 551; Cassell v. Texas, 339 U.
S. 282 (1949).  Thus, " `there seems little loss in terms of effective
advocacy from allowing [the assertion of this claim] by' the present jus
tertii champion."  Craig, supra, at 194 (quoting Singleton, supra, at
118).
    The final inquiry in our third-party standing analysis involves the
likelihood and ability of the third parties, the excluded venirepersons, to
assert their own rights.  See Singleton, supra, at 115-116.  We have held
that individual jurors subjected to racial exclusion have the legal right
to bring suit on their own behalf.  Carter, 396 U. S., at 329330.  As a
practical matter, however, these challenges are rare.  See Alschuler, The
Supreme Court and the Jury: Voir Dire, Peremptory Challenges, and the
Review of Jury Verdicts, 56 U. Chi. L. Rev. 153, 193-195 (1989).  Indeed,
it took nearly a century after the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil
Rights Act of 1875 came into being for the first such case to reach this
Court.  See Carter, supra, at 320.
    The barriers to a suit by an excluded juror are daunting.  Potential
jurors are not parties to the jury selection process and have no
opportunity to be heard at the time of their exclusion.  Nor can excluded
jurors easily obtain declaratory or injunctive relief when discrimination
occurs through an individual prosecutor's exercise of peremptory
challenges.  Unlike a challenge to systematic practices of the jury clerk
and commissioners such as we considered in Carter, it would be difficult
for an individual juror to show a likelihood that discrimination against
him at the voir dire stage will recur.  See Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S.
95, 105-110 (1983).  And, there exist considerable practical barriers to
suit by the excluded juror because of the small financial stake involved
and the economic burdens of litigation.  See Vasquez, supra, at 262, n. 5;
Rose v. Mitchell, supra, at 558.  The reality is that a juror dismissed
because of race probably will leave the courtroom possessing little
incentive to set in motion the arduous process needed to vindicate his own
rights.  See Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S. 249, 257 (1953).
    We conclude that a defendant in a criminal case can raise the
third-party equal protection claims of jurors excluded by the prosecution
because of their race.  In so doing, we once again decline "to reverse a
course of decisions of long standing directed against racial discrimination
in the administration of justice."  Cassell v. Texas, 339 U. S. 282, 290
(1950) (Frankfurter, J., concurring in judgment).  To bar petitioner's
claim because his race differs from that of the excluded jurors would be to
condone the arbitrary exclusion of citizens from the duty, honor, and
privilege of jury service.  In Holland and Batson, we spoke of the
significant role peremptory challenges play in our trial procedures, but we
noted also that the utility of the peremptory challenge system must be
accommodated to the command of racial neutrality.  Holland, supra, at ---;
Batson, supra, at 98-99.
    The Fourteenth Amendment's mandate that race discrimi nation be
eliminated from all official acts and proceedings of the State is most
compelling in the judicial system.  Rose v. Mitchell, supra, at 555.  We
have held, for example, that prosecutorial discretion cannot be exercised
on the basis of race, Wayte v. United States, 470 U. S. 598, 608 (1985),
and that, where racial bias is likely to influence a jury, an inquiry must
be made into such bias.  Ristaino v. Ross, 424 U. S. 589, 596 (1976); see
also Turner v. Murray, 476 U. S. 28 (1986).  The statutory prohibition on
discrimination in the selection of jurors, 18 U. S. C. MDRV 243, enacted
pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment's Enabling Clause, makes race
neutrality in jury selection a visible, and inevitable, measure of the
judicial system's own commitment to the commands of the Constitution.  The
courts are under an affirmative duty to enforce the strong statutory and
constitutional policies embodied in that prohibition.  See Peters v. Kiff,
407 U. S., at 507 (White, J., concurring in judgment); see also id., at 505
(opinion of Marshall, J.).
    The emphasis in Batson on racial identity between the defendant and the
excused prospective juror is not inconsistent with our holding today that
race is irrelevant to a defendant's standing to object to the
discriminatory use of peremptory challenges.  Racial identity between the
defendant and the excused person might in some cases be the explanation for
the prosecution's adoption of the forbidden stereotype, and if the alleged
race bias takes this form, it may provide one of the easier cases to
establish both a prima facie case and a conclusive showing that wrongful
discrimination has occurred.  But to say that the race of the defendant may
be relevant to discerning bias in some cases does not mean that it will be
a factor in others, for race prejudice stems from various causes and may
manifest itself in different forms.
    It remains for the trial courts to develop rules, without unnecessary
disruption of the jury selection process, to permit legitimate and
well-founded objections to the use of peremptory challenges as a mask for
race prejudice.  In this case, the State concedes that, if we find the
petitioner has standing to object to the prosecution's use of the
peremptory challenges, the case should be remanded.  We find that
petitioner does have standing.  The judgment is reversed, and the case is
remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with our opinion.

It is so ordered.


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