United States v. Bass
The Supreme Court summarily reversed a lower court order that had let a black defendant facing federal death-penalty charges obtain government discovery based on nationwide statistics showing racial disparities in capital charging.
The Court said those broad statistics did not show that similarly situated defendants of other races were treated differently in his specific case, reinforcing a strict evidentiary bar for defendants claiming racially selective prosecution.
How it got here: A federal trial court ordered discovery and then dismissed the death-penalty notice when the government refused to comply; the Sixth Circuit affirmed the discovery order, and the government sought review.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A federal grand jury in Michigan charged a black man with intentionally killing two people with a firearm, and the government said it would seek the death penalty. He argued the government targeted him because of his race and asked to dismiss the death-penalty notice or, failing that, to get discovery into the government's capital-charging practices nationwide.
The question before the Court
Could a man facing federal death-penalty charges get government records on charging decisions just by pointing to nationwide racial statistics?
Why it matters
Defendants who believe race influenced a prosecutor's charging decisions will have a harder time getting internal government records to prove it, since broad national statistics alone won't be enough. The ruling protects prosecutors' charging discretion from being second-guessed without specific, comparable evidence.
What changes now
The Supreme Court's reversal ends the discovery dispute in the defendant's favor for the government, meaning he cannot obtain the requested records based on the evidence he presented. The underlying capital case can proceed without that discovery, though the defendant remains free to pursue his selective-prosecution claim if he can produce more specific comparative evidence. This is a final ruling on the discovery question, not a temporary order.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether the defendant was actually the victim of racial discrimination in the decision to seek the death penalty against him, only that he had not produced enough evidence to justify discovery on that claim.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied its prior ruling in Armstrong, which requires a defendant seeking discovery on a claim of selective prosecution to show credible evidence of both a discriminatory effect and a discriminatory intent behind the charging decision.
- The Court focused only on discriminatory effect, which under Armstrong requires a credible showing that similarly situated people of a different race were not prosecuted the same way.
- The Court found that nationwide statistics showing blacks were charged with death-eligible offenses more often than whites, and that whites received more plea deals, did not show anything about how similarly situated defendants were actually treated.
- The Court noted the plea-bargain statistics were especially irrelevant here because the defendant himself had been offered a plea bargain and turned it down.
- Because the defendant did not produce evidence comparing his treatment to similarly situated people of another race, he had not met Armstrong's threshold and was not entitled to discovery into the government's charging practices.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms United States v. Armstrong (517 U. S. 456)
The Court applied Armstrong's discovery standard for selective-prosecution claims and found it was not satisfied here.