29 Jun June 2026 Kentucky Supreme Court Round Up

Regretfully, there were no family law decisions from the Supremes in June.

However, that gave the crackerjack staff at the Round Up a chance to glance at the criminal docket. And the results are surprising.

Batson Rides Again

In the span of one day, the Supreme Court of Kentucky reversed TWO criminal convictions because of Batson violations. Yes, that Batson—the 1986 United States Supreme Court case that every trial lawyer learns in law school, every prosecutor has heard about a hundred times, and every trial judge should recognize before the words “peremptory strike” leave counsel’s mouth.

Yet here we are.

Cornelius Baskin v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, 2024-SC-0336

In Baskin v. Commonwealth, out of Warren County before Judge John R. Grise, Chief Justice Debra Hembree Lambert wrote for a unanimous Court reversing a 25-year drug trafficking conviction. The prosecutor struck a Black juror based largely on second-hand information from unnamed attorneys who supposedly remembered comments the juror had made in another case. The problem? Nobody could identify the prior case, nobody verified the alleged statements, and the juror herself denied holding the views attributed to her. This Opinion notes that the trial judge rejected on the prosecutor’s claims that a potential juror was “inattentive” and stated that she was more attentive that “half the white jurors.” A remarkable exchange. Meanwhile, a white juror who openly expressed concern that “the criminal justice system is broken” remained on the panel. The Court held that the Commonwealth’s explanation was ultimately a pretext for discrimination and ordered a new trial.

To be published. http://opinions.kycourts.net/sc/2024-SC-0336-MR.pdf

Terrell Harris v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, 2024-SC-0263

Then came Harris v. Commonwealth, from Kenton County. Justice Pamela Goodwine’s opinion did more than reverse a conviction—it cleaned up Kentucky’s Batson jurisprudence. The prosecutor struck the only African-American juror after a jail employee vaguely thought he recognized the juror’s name from someone associated with the detention center. No one asked the juror a single follow-up question. The trial court accepted the explanation largely because it trusted the prosecutors personally. The Supreme Court wasn’t buying it. More importantly, the Court expressly rejected Kentucky cases suggesting trial judges may simply accept a prosecutor’s explanation “at face value.” In doing so, Commonwealth v. Snodgrass was partially overruled. Trial court judges are required to be independent factfinders and explanations must be clear, reasonably specific and genuinely case related, before moving to the credibility analysis.

To be published. http://opinions.kycourts.net/sc/2024-SC-0263-DG.pdf

The holdings from the Supreme Court reiterate that Batson will be enforced in the Commonwealth.  It seems remarkable that some prosecutors can’t seem to resist the urge to strike minority jurors from the panel.

Thanks for reading! Click here to read the previous Supreme Court Round Up and click here to read the previous Court of Appeals Round Up.
Cover Photo by Cemrecan Yurtman on Unsplash.