Williams v. Price

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Williams v. Price
the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Syllabus

Williams v. Price, 343 F.3d 223 (3d Cir. 2003) was a 2003 case involving voir dire, a legal process in which potential jurors are asked questions to investigate their suitability for jury duty. Ronald A. Williams, serving life imprisonment for first-degree murder, alleged that his Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury was abridged when jurors lied regarding their racial prejudices during voir dire. State courts had refused to consider the testimony of a witness who stated that a juror had uttered derogatory remarks about African Americans during an encounter in the courthouse after the conclusion of the trial. Samuel Alito, writing for the court, declared that "the state courts' refusal to receive some but not all of this evidence violated Williams's clearly established constitutional rights." The court granted a writ of habeas corpus to Williams.

772731Williams v. Price — Syllabusthe United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit

343 F.3d 223

RONALD A. WILLIAMS, Appellant

v.

JAMES PRICE, Superintendent, SCI-Pittsburgh; D. MICHAEL FISHER, Attorney General

No. 00-2305

United States Court of Appeals,
Third Circuit.


February 10, 2003, Argued

September 9, 2003, Filed


CHRIS RAND EYSTER (Argued), Pittsburgh, PA. Counsel for Appellant.

TIMOTHY F. McCUNE (Argued), Butler County District Attorney's Office, Butler, PA. Counsel for Appellee.

Before: ALITO and McKEE, Circuit Judges, and SCHWARZER,[1] District Judge.

Footnotes

[edit]
  1. The Honorable William W Schwarzer, Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, sitting by designation.

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government (see 17 U.S.C. 105).

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