George Overton v. James Newton, Superintendent of the Watertown Correctional Facility

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding the Supreme Court precedents on racially discriminatory use of peremptory challenges “must be read as not only prohibiting certain specific actions, but also as creating a broad standard or principle that the courts must, in reason, follow”
• denying habeas when prosecutor struck seven of ten qualified Blacks in the first two rounds, including all five Blacks in the second round
• remanding for reconsideration district court’s habeas decision that relied on precedent from the court of appeals in light of “the more general teachings” of Supreme Court decisions
• expressing no view of what the court’s decision would have been if defendant “had renewed his claim once jury selection was completed or even when the record was fully established.”
• once trial court performs its fact-finding, it must decide, as matter of law, whether prima facie case of discrimination has been established
• “[W]e have no doubt that statistics, alone and without more, can, in appropriate circumstances, be sufficient to establish the requisite pri-ma facie showing under Batson.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).