The Supreme Court held that Iqbal's complaint failed to plead sufficient facts to state a claim for purposeful and unlawful discrimination.

"It's almost impossible to prove purposeful discrimination in a single case," said Dale Jones, an assistant public defender in Trenton.

"The simple truth" is that proof of racial bias is circumstantial at best, lacking "anything remotely resembling clear and convincing evidence of purposeful discrimination," Justice Thomas said.

He said the state's system of financing was not the product of purposeful discrimination, but was rooted in years of experience in this and other states.

In the years following Washington, the Court held in several other cases that laws must be motivated by purposeful discrimination, and not merely have a discriminatory effect, to be unconstitutional.

Today, we are asked to decide whether the Constitution prohibits a criminal defendant from engaging in purposeful racial discrimination in the exercise of peremptory challenges.

On that basis, the Court of Appeal found that Newton failed to prove purposeful discrimination during grand jury selection.

Rather, each capital defendant must prove purposeful discrimination.

The court overruled Swain v. Alabama by lowering the burden of proof that a defendant must meet to make a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination.

The Court had held in Batson that a defendant could rely on "all relevant circumstances" in making out a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination.