holding that previous Supreme Court case law concerning extremely inflammatory publicity “cannot be made to stand for the proposition that juror exposure to information about a state defendant’s prior convictions or to news accounts of the crime with which he is charged alone presumptively deprives the defendant of due process”
How later courts described this case
- holding that previous Supreme Court case law concerning extremely inflammatory publicity “cannot be made to stand for the proposition that juror exposure to information about a state defendant’s prior convictions or to news accounts of the crime with which he is charged alone presumptively deprives the defendant of due process”
- holding that qualified jurors need not be "totally ignorant," and that "to hold that the mere existence of any preconceived notion as to the guilt or innocence of an accused, without more, is sufficient to rebut the presumption of a prospective juror's impartiality would be to establish an impossible standard."
- holding that even where 20 out of 78 potential jurors were excused because they indicated they had a predisposition of defendant’s guilt, this “by no means suggests a community with sentiment so poisoned against [a defendant] as to impeach the indifference of jurors who displayed no animus of their own”
- stating that the rulings in Rideau, Estes, and Sheppard “cannot be made to stand for the proposition that juror exposure to information about a state defendant’s prior convictions or to news accounts of the crime with which he is charged alone presumptively deprives the defendant of due process.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Mb. Chief Justice Burgee,
concurring in the judgment.
' I agree with Mr. Justice Brennan that the trial judge was woefully remiss in failing to insulate prospective jurors from the bizarre media coverage of this case *804 and in not taking steps to prevent pretrial discussion of the ease among them. Although I would not hesitate to reverse petitioner’s conviction in the exercise of our supervisory powers, were this a federal case, I agree with the Court that the circumstances of petitioner’s trial did not rise to the level of a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.