Bethea v. Commonwealth

OPINION BY JUSTICE D. ARTHUR KELSEY

A jury convicted James Willie Bethea of first-degree murder. On appeal, Bethea challenges that conviction by claiming that the trial court violated the holding of Batson v. Kentucky , 476 U.S. 79 , 106 S.Ct. 1712 , 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), by permitting the prosecutor to exercise a racially motivated peremptory strike of an African-American juror. The trial court found that the strike was not racially motivated, and the Court of Appeals affirmed, as do we.

I

A grand jury indicted Bethea for the first-degree murder of Charles Adkins. Bethea's first trial ended in…