Litigants: | Adams v. Texas |
Arguedate: | March 24 |
Argueyear: | 1980 |
Decidedate: | June 25 |
Decideyear: | 1980 |
Fullname: | Randall Dale Adams v. State of Texas |
Usvol: | 448 |
Uspage: | 38 |
Parallelcitations: | 100 S. Ct. 2521; 65 L. Ed. 2d 581 |
Prior: | Certiorari to the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas |
Subsequent: | 577 S.W.2d 717, reversed. |
Holding: | A Texas requirement that jurors swear an oath that the mandatory imposition of a death sentence would not interfere with their consideration of factual matters such as guilt or innocence during a trial is unconstitutional. |
Majority: | White |
Joinmajority: | Brennan, Stewart, Blackmun, Powell, Stevens |
Concurrence: | Burger (in the judgment) |
Concurrence2: | Brennan |
Concurrence3: | Marshall |
Dissent: | Rehnquist |
Adams v. Texas, 448 U.S. 38 (1980), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held on an 8–1 vote that, consistent with its prior opinion in Witherspoon v. Illinois, a Texas requirement that jurors swear an oath that the mandatory imposition of a death sentence would not interfere with their consideration of factual matters such as guilt or innocence during a trial was unconstitutional.
The surrounding factual issues (involving defendant Randall Dale Adams) were the subject of a partially autobiographical book of the same name, and were featured in the 1988 movie The Thin Blue Line.