Rice v. Collins
Collins, an African American male, was tried and convicted in a California district court for possession of a controlled substance. During jury selection, Collins alleged that the prosecutor used her peremptory challenges to strike two women from the jury because the women were African American. The prosecutor gave five race neutral reasons for dismissing the two jurors, which the district court accepted. The California Court of Appeals upheld the conviction and the California Supreme Court denied Collins' petition for review and for a writ of habeus corpus. After reviewing the evidence, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately found that the reasons given by the prosecutor for dismissing the two African American jurors were unconvincing and unsupported by the record. Therefore, the Ninth Circuit reversed the California Court of Appeals and instructed that Collin’s petition be granted.
Question Presented:
Does 28 U.S.C. sec. 2254 allow a federal habeas corpus court to reject the presumption of correctness for state fact finding, and condemn a state-court
adjudication as an unreasonable determination of the facts, where a rational fact finder could have determined the facts as did the state court?
