Foster v. Chatman
The Supreme Court ruled that Georgia prosecutors unconstitutionally struck two black jurors from Timothy Foster's 1987 death-penalty trial because of their race, pointing to prosecution files that highlighted jurors' race and labeled some 'definite NO's.'
The decision revives Foster's decades-old case and reinforces that courts must look at the full record — including internal prosecution notes — when deciding whether race secretly drove jury-selection decisions.
“Two peremptory strikes on the basis of race are two more than the Constitution allows.”
The Court's closing statement summarizing why the jury strikes were unconstitutional.
How it got here: Georgia trial and appellate courts rejected Foster's claim; a state habeas court also denied relief, and the Georgia Supreme Court declined to allow an appeal, prompting Foster to seek Supreme Court review.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Timothy Foster, a black man, was convicted of murdering Queen Madge White, a 79-year-old widow, and sentenced to death by an all-white jury in Georgia. During jury selection, prosecutors struck all four qualified black prospective jurors. Foster argued the strikes were racially motivated. Years later, through an open-records request, Foster obtained the prosecution's own trial file, which contained notes highlighting jurors' race and labeling black jurors for exclusion.
The question before the Court
Did Georgia prosecutors strike every qualified black juror from a death-penalty trial because of race, in violation of the Constitution?
Why it matters
The ruling shows that prosecutors' after-the-fact explanations for striking jurors can be tested against the prosecution's own contemporaneous files, not just courtroom testimony. It gives defendants and courts a clearer roadmap for uncovering hidden racial bias in jury selection, particularly in death-penalty cases where the stakes of an unfair jury are highest.
What changes now
The case is sent back for further proceedings consistent with the Court's finding that Foster's constitutional rights were violated. Because the Court resolved only the federal Batson question, the Georgia courts must still decide, applying Georgia law, what relief follows and how the state's procedural rules on reopening old claims apply now that the federal violation has been established.
What this does not decide
The Court decided only that race was a substantial factor in these two specific juror strikes; it did not resolve broader questions about when old convictions may be reopened based on newly discovered evidence, nor did it decide how Georgia's own res judicata rules apply on remand — Justice Alito's concurrence stressed that state-law question remains for Georgia's courts.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Alito
Justice Alito agreed the case must be sent back but wrote separately to stress that Georgia's own procedural rules about reopening previously rejected claims remain a matter for Georgia's courts to decide on remand. He explained that the Supreme Court's jurisdiction extends only to the federal Batson question, and that Georgia's highest court must still determine whether its res judicata doctrine bars relief despite the newly confirmed constitutional violation.
Dissent — Justice Thomas
“The notion that this "newly discovered evidence" could warrant relitigation of a Batson claim is flabbergasting.”Thomas's core objection that decades-old juror strikes should not be reopened based on this evidence.
Justice Thomas argued the Court likely lacked jurisdiction because the Georgia Supreme Court's one-line order probably rested on an independent state procedural bar, and the Court should have sought clarification from Georgia's courts before assuming otherwise. On the merits, he argued the newly discovered evidence had little real value, that much of it was of unknown authorship, and that the Court improperly second-guessed the trial court's decades-old, more reliable credibility findings about the prosecutors' race-neutral explanations.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court first confirmed it had jurisdiction, explaining that when a state court's procedural bar depends on resolving the same federal question, that bar is not an 'independent' state-law ground that would block Supreme Court review — so the case could proceed to the merits.
- The Court applied the three-step framework from Batson v. Kentucky for evaluating claims that a juror was struck because of race: the defendant must show an initial pattern suggesting race played a role, the prosecution must give race-neutral reasons, and the court must then decide whether those reasons were genuine or a cover for discrimination.
- Because the parties agreed on the first two steps, the Court focused on whether the prosecution's stated reasons for striking jurors Marilyn Garrett and Eddie Hood were credible, weighing all the circumstantial evidence bearing on racial motive, including the prosecution's own case file.
- The Court found the prosecution's account of Garrett's strike was contradicted by its own 'definite NO's' list showing she was targeted from the outset, and found several of its stated reasons for striking her applied equally to white jurors who were kept on the panel.
- The Court found the prosecution's justifications for striking Hood shifted over time between two different 'main' reasons, both of which fell apart under scrutiny, and that a note about Hood's church was marked 'NO Black Church.'
- Weighing the shifting explanations, contradicted facts, and pervasive focus on jurors' race in the prosecution's file together, the Court concluded that race was a substantial factor behind both strikes, meeting Batson's standard for purposeful discrimination.