Defense Can’t Exclude Jurors Based on Race : Law: Supreme Court rules arbitrary dismissals violate would-be panelists’ constitutional rights and erode public confidence in America’s judicial system.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a defense attorney may not arbitrarily exclude potential jurors on the basis of their race.

The justices, by a 7-2 vote, said that lawyers for defendants violate the constitutional rights of would-be jurors and erode public confidence when they make peremptory, or automatic, challenges of prospective jurors based on race.

The ruling bolsters a series of opinions issued over the last six years in which the court has imposed similar restrictions on prosecuting attorneys.

“Be it at the hands of the state or the defense, if a court allows jurors to be excluded because of group bias, it is a willing participant in a scheme that could only undermine the very foundation of our system of justice--our citizens’ confidence in it,” Justice Harry A. Blackmun wrote for the court.

Blackmun flatly rejected the notion that the accused in a criminal trial should be allowed to shape the jury according to race in an effort to get a more sympathetic jury. “It is an affront to justice to argue that a fair trial includes the right to discriminate against a group of citizens based upon their race,” he said.

In the past, defense attorneys generally have been given broad leeway in rejecting potential jurors for any reason. Under Thursday’s ruling, a defense attorney would have to be able to show that he had a valid reason, apart from race, for asking that a potential juror be barred from a jury.

Experts said that the decision could make it easier to avoid all-white juries in racially charged cases, such as the retrial of a white Los Angeles police officer charged in the beating of motorist Rodney G. King. But, they said, it could pose a problem in the far more common situation in which minority defendants attempt to exclude some white jurors to ensure that minorities serve on their juries.

The high court decision came in an Albany, Ga., case in which three white defendants were charged with assaulting a black couple. Prosecutors sought to bar the defendants from using their peremptory challenges in an effort to obtain an all-white jury.

The black couple, Myra and Jerry Collins, had gone to a dry cleaning business in January, 1990, to pick up their clothing and allegedly were attacked by the store’s owners--Thomas, William and Ella McCollum.

Prosecutors said that Mrs. Collins was clubbed with a baseball bat. They said that the attack was motivated at least in part by racial hatred in a city with a 43% black population and a history of civil rights turmoil. The trial of the McCollums was suspended after prosecutors moved to ban defense lawyers from using their 20 peremptory challenges in a racially biased manner.

Blackmun’s opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Byron R. White, John Paul Stevens, Anthony M. Kennedy and David H. Souter. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion. Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Antonin Scalia dissented.

Some experts said that the decision could spark a new controversy over whether--by attempting to eliminate racial considerations entirely--the justices might be limiting the flexibility of defense attorneys to win the best chances for acquittal of their clients.

In her dissenting opinion, Justice O’Connor pointed out that the high court’s earlier prohibitions against using race as a criterion in jury selection were designed to guard against unfairness on the part of the government.

By contrast, she argued, a defendant ought to be able to eliminate any potential jury member whom he chooses.

“In a world where the outcome of a minority defendant’s trial may turn on the misconceptions or biases of white jurors, there is cause to question the implications of this court’s good intentions,” she wrote. “Our cases do not compel this perverse result.”

And Thomas, the court’s only black, declared: “I am certain that black criminal defendants will rue the day that this court ventured down this road.” He predicted that the ruling “inexorably will lead to the elimination of peremptory strikes.”

Noting that the high court outlawed states from barring blacks from juries in 1880, Thomas said that that ruling was based on the belief that having a defendant’s race represented on the jury “may help overcome racial bias and provide . . . a better chance of having a fair trial.” He added: “Whatever the benefits were that this court perceived . . . have evaporated.”

In a warning that appeared to allude to the rioting in Los Angeles this spring, Blackmun said that confidence in the criminal justice system is “essential for preserving community peace in trials involving race-related crimes.”

Criminal law experts said that the recent rulings forbid discrimination against Latinos as well as blacks in picking juries. In April, a federal appeals court extended this principle to also forbid lawyers to use sex as a basis for excluding jurors. But the Supreme Court has yet to rule on that issue.

Legal experts said that the California Supreme Court, in a 1978 decision, already has prohibited racial discrimination in jury selection by either side.

Under United States and state criminal laws, prosecutors and defense attorneys each are allowed to reject certain potential jurors arbitrarily, in what are known as “peremptory” challenges. In California, the maximum is 10 in a felony case and 20 in a case involving the death penalty.