Berghuis v. Smith

The Sixth Amendment secures to criminal defendants the right to be tried by an impartial jury drawn from sources reflecting a fair cross section of the community. See Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U. S. 522 (1975). The question presented in this case is whether that right was accorded to respondent Diapolis Smith, an African-American convicted of second-degree murder by an all-white jury in Kent County, Michigan, in 1993. At the time of Smith’s trial, African-Americans constituted 7.28% of Kent County’s jury-eligible population, and 6% of the pool from which potential jurors were drawn.

In Duren v.…