McCleskey v. Kemp

McCleskey (defendant), an African American man, was convicted of murdering a white police officer and sentenced to death in Georgia. He filed a federal habeas petition arguing Georgia's capital sentencing system was administered in a racially discriminatory manner, in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. To support this, he offered a statistical study finding that defendants who killed white victims were far more likely to receive a death sentence than defendants who killed Black victims, and that prosecutors sought death more often against Black defendants. The district court and court of appeals rejected the claim, and the Supreme Court granted review.