State v. Gilliam

BRANCH, Chief Justice.

Defendants’ first assignment of error concerns the use of peremptory challenges by the prosecutor to remove blacks from the venire. They argue that the prosecutor excused qualified blacks from the venire solely on account of their race and thereby violated the defendants’ rights to due process of law and equal protection of the law under the fourteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution and Article I, Sections 19 and 24 of the North Carolina Constitution.

In the recent case of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. —, 90 L.Ed. 2d 69, 54 U.S.L.W. 4425 (filed 30 April 1986), the…