finding no constitutional issue where the circumstances did not "suggest a significant likelihood that racial prejudice might infect [defendant's] trial," simply due to the "mere fact that the victim of the crimes alleged was a white man and the defendants were Negroes"
How later courts described this case
- finding no constitutional issue where the circumstances did not "suggest a significant likelihood that racial prejudice might infect [defendant's] trial," simply due to the "mere fact that the victim of the crimes alleged was a white man and the defendants were Negroes"
- holding that voir dire concerning racial prejudice can be required as an exercise of supervisory authority
- concluding that specific questioning about racial bias was not necessary where the particular circumstances of. the case “did not suggest a significant likelihood that racial prejudice might infect [the] trial”
- holding that specific questions regarding racial bias were not necessary when the circumstances of the case “did not suggest a significant likelihood that racial prejudice might infect [the] trial.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
*599 Mr. Justice Marshall,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan joins, dissenting.
In 1973, the Court refused to review the affirmance on direct appeal of Mr. Ross’ conviction. 414 U. S. 1080 . In dissenting from that refusal, I observed that “[t]o deny this petition for certiorari is to see our decision in Ham v. South Carolina, [ 409 U. S. 524 (1973),] stillborn and to write an epitaph for those ‘essential demands of fairness’ recognized by this Court 40 years ago in Aldridge [v. United States, 283 U. S. 308 (1931)].” Id., at 1085. Today, in reversing the Court of Appeals’ affirmance of the District Court’s grant of a writ of habeas corpus, the Court emphatically confirms that the promises inherent in Ham and Aldridge will not be fulfilled. For the reasons expressed in my dissent from the earlier denial of certiorari, I cannot join in this confirmation. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.