Avery v. Georgia
The Supreme Court threw out a Georgia man's rape conviction and death sentence because the jury panel that tried him was picked using a system that sorted prospective jurors by race with white and yellow tickets, and not a single Black juror ended up on the panel despite many being available.
The ruling makes clear that once a defendant shows strong signs of racial discrimination in how a jury panel was assembled, the burden shifts to the state to prove discrimination didn't happen — the defendant does not have to catch a specific official in the act.
“If they failed in that duty, then this conviction must be reversed — no matter how strong the evidence of petitioner’s guilt.”
The Court's statement that racial discrimination in jury selection requires reversal regardless of guilt.
How it got here: A Georgia trial court rejected the man's challenge to his all-white jury panel; the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed his conviction, and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A Black man was tried for rape in Georgia and sentenced to death. Georgia's system for building jury panels used tax-roll lists in which white and Black residents' names were printed on separate colored tickets before being placed in a box for drawing. Although Black residents were available and did serve on juries generally in the county, the sixty-person panel chosen for his trial included no Black jurors at all.
The question before the Court
Could Georgia convict a Black man using a jury panel picked from a box that sorted names by race with white and yellow tickets, even though no Black jurors ended up on the panel?
Why it matters
The decision makes it harder for states to defend jury-selection systems that sort people by race, even when officials swear they acted honestly. By shifting the burden to the state once a defendant shows a suspicious racial pattern, the ruling gives defendants a more realistic path to challenging discriminatory juries, particularly in death penalty cases.
What changes now
The conviction and death sentence are reversed, meaning Georgia cannot enforce the sentence based on this jury. The state may retry the man, but must select a jury panel through a process that does not create the kind of racial pattern found unconstitutional here. The decision does not ban the use of tax rolls generally, only practices that make racial discrimination in jury selection possible and go unexplained by the state.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide that the judge or clerks in this case actually intended to discriminate, nor did it ban tax-roll-based jury lists generally. It held only that this particular racially coded ticket system, combined with an all-white sixty-person panel, was unexplained enough to require reversal.
Concurrences and dissents
How the Justices voted
Majority (1). Justice Vinson (author).
Separate writings (2). Justice Reed (author of a concurrence).
Concurrence — Justice Black
Justice Black agreed the conviction should be reversed but did not join the Court's reasoning, concurring only in the result without elaborating his own rationale.
Concurrence — Justice Reed
Justice Reed laid out detailed population and jury-list statistics for Fulton County — showing Black residents made up a much larger share of the county and even the tax digest than they did of the jury lists — to explain why he found a prima facie case of discrimination that the state failed to rebut. Read the full concurrence →
Concurrence — Justice Frankfurter
Justice Frankfurter emphasized that a former jury commissioner testified the white-and-yellow ticket system was designed for racial discrimination and served no other apparent purpose. He argued that any jury-selection mechanism with a component distinguishing by race creates opportunities for discrimination and cannot be tolerated once it produces a discriminatory result like an all-white panel. Read the full concurrence →
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied its long-standing rule that officials running jury selection have a constitutional duty to follow procedures that do not operate to discriminate on racial grounds, regardless of whether any individual official intended to discriminate.
- The Court treated the use of separate white and yellow tickets for white and Black prospective jurors as creating an obvious opportunity for discrimination at multiple points in the selection process, even if the initial draw from the box was itself unbiased.
- Because the sixty-person panel that tried this case contained not a single Black juror despite Black residents being available for jury service, the Court held this pattern alone was enough to establish a prima facie case — a first-look showing strong enough to require an answer — of racial discrimination.
- The Court rejected the lower court's approach of requiring the defendant to identify a specific discriminatory act by a specific official, holding instead that once a prima facie case is shown, the burden shifts to the state to come forward with evidence dispelling it.
- Applying that burden-shifting rule, the Court found that Georgia had not produced sufficient evidence to overcome the prima facie showing of discrimination in how this particular panel was assembled.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Hill v. Texas (316 U. S. 400)
Relied on for the rule that jury officials must follow procedures that avoid racial discrimination.
Reaffirms Norris v. Alabama (294 U. S. 587)
Cited as establishing that once discrimination is shown, the state must come forward to disprove it.