Georgia v. McCollum

Georgia v. McCollum
Georgia v. McCollum
	Supreme Court of the United States
Argued February 26, 1992; Decided June 18, 1992
Full case name	Georgia, Petitioner v. Thomas McCollum, William Joseph McCollum and Ella Hampton McCollum
Citations	505 U.S. 42 (more) 112 S. Ct. 2348; 120 L. Ed. 2d 33
Holding
	The Constitution prohibits a criminal defendant from engaging in purposeful discrimination on the ground of race in the exercise of peremptory challenges.
Court membership
	Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices Byron White · Harry Blackmun; John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor; Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy; David Souter · Clarence Thomas
Case opinions
Majority	Blackmun, joined by Rehnquist, White, Stevens, Kennedy, Souter
Concurrence	Rehnquist
Concurrence	Thomas
Dissent	O'Connor
Dissent	Scalia
Laws applied
	U.S. Const. amend. XIV

Georgia v. McCollum, 505 U.S. 42 (1992), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a criminal defendant cannot make peremptory challenges based solely on race.^[1] The court had previously held in Batson v. Kentucky (1986) that prosecutors cannot make peremptory challenges based on race, but did not address whether defendants could use them.^[2] The court had already ruled in Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Company (1991) that the Batson prohibition also applies to civil litigants because they are state actors during the jury selection process.^[3]

However, in Polk County v. Dodson,^[4] the court had held that a public defender is not a state actor in the context of a lawsuit for inadequate legal representation. McCollum argued that Polk County was the controlling precedent, so public defenders are not state actors during jury selection. Writing for the court, Justice Harry Blackmun disagreed. Blackmun found that whether a public defender is a state actor "depends on the nature and context of the function he is performing."^[5] Just as he is a state actor in the context of personnel decisions like hiring and firing attorneys in his office, a public defender is a state actor in the context of peremptory challenges. Like in Edmonson, Blackmun found that race-based peremptory challenges by the defendant violate the Equal Protection Clause and are therefore unconstitutional.