Swain v. Alabama shields prosecutor peremptory strikes from review

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Robert Swain, a Black man sentenced to death in Talladega County, Alabama, could not challenge the prosecution's use of peremptory strikes to remove all six Black potential jurors from his trial. Justice Byron White wrote the majority holding that defendants must prove systematic exclusion across many cases to trigger Equal Protection scrutiny — a burden the Court acknowledged was nearly impossible to meet. The ruling gave prosecutors effectively unchecked authority to remove Black jurors for 21 years.