Preserving the Peremptory Challenge The perempt

The peremptory challenge derives its significance from the common law and is considered an essential element of a trial by an impartial jury. Although the Constitution does not guarantee the right to the peremptory challenge, it has been termed "one of the most important of the rights secured to the accused. Historically, it has allowed defendants to eliminate prospective jurors whom they suspect to be biased against them. Blackstone wrote that the challenge has two traditional purposes. First, it allows defendants to remove any jurors they intuitively dislike, thus insuring they have "a good opinion of the jury, the want of which might totally disconcert him." Second, it permits the exclusion of jurors whom defendants may have alienated through voir dire.

Consequently, peremptory challenges are essential to the selection of an impartial jury and should not be abolished or subjected to judicial review. Neither random selection nor challenges for cause are adequate to detect and eliminate the subconscious biases that destroy impartiality. The peremptory better performs this task, but it cannot do so effectively if the motives for its exercise are subject to judicial control in any particular case. Nonethless, peremptory challenges will probably not survive in any form that permits them to be used in a purely arbitrary manner. The strongest argument against the use of peremptories rises in cases where the prosecutor atte

. . .
not surprising, therefore. Admittedly, such activity is detrimental to the jury system, which is a fundamental institution of democratic government, and the use of the peremptory in a racist manner cannot be permitted. Excluding certain people from the jury selection process is harmful not only because it threatens democratic ideals but also because it is detrimental to public confidence in the judicial process. The argument against the use of the peremptory articulates the fear that given the history of racism in this country and the history of the use of the jury to enforce that racism, racially discriminatory peremptory challenges are a harm to the black defendant, whether or not they actually result in a guilty verdict. Where blacks are already a minority of the population, each strike is discriminatory because it lessens the probability that blacks will be on the jury, thus increasing the probability of a biased jury and decreasing the probability that a cross-section of community values will be fairly represented. The proposition that the peremptory is an irreconcilable conflict with the Equal Protection Clause is largely "linked to the suggestion that the ban on jury discrimination must inevitably expand to pro
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Sixth Amendment, Peremptory Challenge, Protection Clause, Court Minnesota, Fourteenth Amendment, Saltzburg Powers, American American, peremptory challenge, Trial July, Harv CR-CL, Md Rev, equal protection, impartial jury, peremptory challenges, jury selection, equal protection clause, discriminatory peremptories, prosecutorial peremptories, black jurors, protection clause, challenge cause, defendant's impartial jury, race sex religion, jury selection based,
Approximate Word count = 1532
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)