Next month, the Supreme Court will decide whether District Attorney Doug Evans’s use dozens of peremptory questions — which do not require the giving of a reason — in order to exclude prospective black jurors from his case violated the Constitution. The court’s decision may not be as narrow because of Mr. Evans’s extraordinary track record. The justices may also use this case to address Batson v. Kentucky 1986, which made an exception from the centuries-old rule that peremptory challengers are entirely discretionary and cannot to be second-guessed. The court in Batson ruled that jury selection discrimination was different and required lawyers to give a nondiscriminatory explanation. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, a Yale law student in 1989, wrote in The Yale Law Journal that he wanted to scrutinize the arguments for peremptory challenges, where race might have been a factor. The complete New York Times article is available here. A Mississippi High Court ruling in Curtis Flowers will be reviewed by the Justices. It challenges Evans’s track record of striking potential African jurors from jury pools. Curtis Flowers case will be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court