# Georgia v. McCollum > Supreme Court of the United States · June 18, 1992 · 505 U.S. 42 URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9432614 ## Case - **Full name:** GEORGIA v. McCOLLUM Et Al. - **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States - **Decided:** June 18, 1992 - **Citations:** 505 U.S. 42; 112 S. Ct. 2348; 120 L. Ed. 2d 33; 1992 U.S. LEXIS 3687 - **Precedential status:** Published - **Opinion:** Dissent by Scalia - **Judges:** Scalia, Blackmun, Rehnquist, White, Stevens, Kennedy, Soutek, Thomas, O'Connor, Scalía - **Cited by:** 1,048 later opinions in the Frix Law Library ## Citator (automated) - No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases. - Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9432614 ## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction) - explaining that “a prohibition of the exercise of discriminatory peremptory challenges [does not] violate a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel . . . . [because] neither the Sixth Amendment right nor the attorney-client privilege gives a cr… - stating that the majority’s opinion, which extended Batson to a white defendant’s peremptory challenges aimed at removing all African-Americans from the jury, would apply with equal force to the case of a minority defendant’s exercise of peremptory challenges to remove white p… - holding a criminal defendant may not use a peremptory strike in a discriminatory manner because "[r]egardless of who invokes the discriminatory challenge, there can be no doubt that the harm is the same — in all cases, the juror is subjected to open and public racial discrimin… - holding that "[i]n our heterogenous society policy as well as constitutional considerations militate against the divisive assumption — as a per se rule — that justice in a court of law may turn upon the pigmentation of skin, the accident of birth, or the choice of religion" - holding that the State may challenge a criminal defendant’s peremptory strikes ## Opinion text Justice Scalia, dissenting. I agree with the Court that its judgment follows logically from Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., 500 U. S. 614 (1991). For the reasons given in the Edmonson dissents, however, I think that case was wrongly decided. Barely a year later, we witness its reduction to the terminally absurd: *70 A criminal defendant, in the process of defending himself against the state, is held to be acting on behalf of the state. Justice O’Connor demonstrates the sheer inanity of this proposition (in case the mere statement of it does not suffice), and the contrived nature of the Court’s justifications. I see no need to add to her discussion, and differ from her views only in that I do not consider Edmonson distinguishable in principle — except in the principle that a bad decision should not be followed logically to its illogical conclusion. Today’s decision gives the lie once again to the belief that an activist, “evolutionary” constitutional jurisprudence always evolves in the direction of greater individual rights. In the interest of promoting the supposedly greater good of race relations in the society as a whole (make no mistake that that is what underlies all of this), we use the Constitution to destroy the ages-old right of criminal defendants to exercise peremptory challenges as they wish, to secure a jury that they consider fair. I dissent. --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9432614. Public record. Not legal advice.