Spencer v. State

As early as 1481 when Sir Thomas Littleton published his Tenures, the availability to a criminal defendant of the unfettered right to challenge peremptorily prospective jurors was already of long and settled usage. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen in 1 A History of the Criminal Law of England, 301-303, (1883) finds references to the procedure as early as the writings of Bracton (c. 1252) and Britton (c. 1290). The first statute on the subject, The Ordinance for Inquests, 33 Edw. 1, Stat. 4 (1305), cut back on the unlimited use of peremptory challenges by the Crown, but left untouched at 35 the…