People v. Hartfield

In 1984, defendant John Hartfield was convicted of rape and aggravated battery; he was adjudged a habitual criminal and was sentenced to life imprisonment. After an unsuccessful appeal, defendant filed a post-conviction petition, alleging constitutional error due to the State’s use of peremptory challenges to exclude blacks from the jury and his trial counsel’s refusal to comply with his requests to object to this conduct. The circuit court dismissed the petition without an evi-dentiary hearing. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

During the court’s voir dire of the potential jurors, one…