Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado

The Court today holds that the Sixth Amendment requires the States to provide a criminal defendant the opportunity to impeach a jury's guilty verdict with juror testimony about a juror's alleged racial bias, notwithstanding a state procedural rule forbidding such testimony. I agree with Justice ALITO that the Court's decision is incompatible with the text of the Amendment it purports to interpret and with our precedents. I write separately to explain that the Court's holding also cannot be squared with the original understanding of the Sixth or Fourteenth Amendments.

I

The Sixth Amendment's…