noting that there are valid reasons not to ask questions concerning racial issues even in a case where the victim is white and the defendant is black
How later courts described this case
- noting that there are valid reasons not to ask questions concerning racial issues even in a case where the victim is white and the defendant is black
- the mere fact that a black man was charged with raping a white woman did not imbue the case with heightened racial sensitivity requiring specific voir dire on racial bias
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
NIX, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I agree with the majority’s conclusion that the trial court’s restriction of voir dire would be considered unduly restrictive in a case that is racially sensitive. However, I disagree with the judgment that the instant case did not in fact present a racially sensitive atmosphere.
I believe that it is unrealistic to argue that racial overtones do not permeate the trial where a black man is charged with the rape of a white woman and the defense asserted is consent. This type of situation requires that counsel be allowed to ascertain, of prospective jurors, whether personal deep seated biases would influence such a judgment. Often such predilections are consciously not evident even to the one possessing them and cannot be uncovered by the general question permitted in this case. *366 The majority asserts that by allowing such inquiry, “... the questions would have given credence to base stereotypic racial fallacies, serving no purpose but to exacerbate prejudices which the law should combat with all its vigor.” By denying defense counsel the right to make such inquiry, however, this Court does not avoid the exacerbation of the cancer of the mind and spirit that is racial prejudice. Rather, by concluding that this case does not involve a racially sensitive situation, this Court has “... ignore[d] as judges what we must all know as men ... ”, as Justice Marshall once so poignantly observed. Ross v. Massachusetts, 414 U.S. 1080 , 1085, 94 S.Ct. 599, 602 , 38 L.Ed.2d 486 (1973) (Marshall, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). The assumption of such an ostrichlike posture by this Court does not combat prejudice with all the vigor of the law, as the majority asserts, but to the contrary attempts to ignore it and thereby allows it to flourish unchecked. I dissent.