Justices Expand Ban on Barring Jurors by Race : Supreme Court: The decision addresses a case in which blacks were excluded by prosecutors from the panel in a white defendant’s murder trial.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that prosecutors may not use race as a basis for excluding anyone from a jury in a criminal trial.

The 7-2 ruling clarifies a landmark 1986 decision in which the court ruled that a black defendant’s rights are violated when blacks are systematically excluded from his jury. In that case, Batson vs. Kentucky, the court said that if several blacks are removed from the jury pool, a judge will require that the prosecutor offer a convincing, nonracial reason for his action.

On Monday, the court said that the same principle applies to a white defendant who complains about blacks being removed from his jury.

“Race cannot be a proxy for determining juror bias or competence,” wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy for the court in the case (Powers vs. Ohio, 89-5011). “An individual juror does not have a right to sit on any particular petit jury but he or she does possess the right not to be excluded from one on account of race.”

The decision means that Ohio prosecutors will be required to justify their removal of seven blacks in 1985 from the jury that tried Larry Joe Powers, a white man. He was convicted of murdering two white people and sentenced to 50 years in prison.

If the prosecutors are unable to justify their actions, Powers could be given a new trial. The prosecutor has never said why blacks were struck from the jury and the defense has never said why it thought Powers would benefit if blacks were included.

Last year, the court said that defendants do not have a constitutional right to be tried by juries that reflect a “fair cross section” of the community, except in the case of race. Prosecutors are freely permitted to exclude potential jurors because of their age, sex, religion, profession, ethnic background or any other reason--except race.

The 14th Amendment was intended to end racial discrimination by the government, Kennedy noted. It specifically forbids the state from denying to any person the “equal protection of the laws.”

He wrote: “We hold that the Equal Protection Clause prohibits a prosecutor from using the state’s peremptory challenges to exclude otherwise qualified and unbiased persons from the petit jury solely by race.”

Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, lambasted colleagues for a ruling that could allow a convicted murderer to go free.

While it is “intolerably offensive” for a black person to be tried by a jury from which blacks were excluded, Scalia said he was “unmoved” by a white defendant’s claim that he was being unfairly tried by an all-white jury.

Monday’s decision leaves at least two key questions unanswered.

May attorneys use race as a reason to exclude jurors in civil cases, as well as criminal cases? That question should be answered in a pending case which was argued before the court in January.

Does the same principle on excluding potential jurors because of their race also apply to defense attorneys? The 14th Amendment restricts only the government, not private parties. So far, the justices have turned down chances to rule on whether a defense lawyer can exclude all the blacks or whites from a jury.

In other actions, the court:

--Agreed to decide whether the Immigration and Naturalization Service can bar aliens facing deportation from working while they appeal their cases (INS vs. National Center for Immigrants’ Rights, 90-1090). About 97% of illegal aliens who are arrested agree to leave the country voluntarily. But the INS has sought to impose a no-work rule as a condition of bail for those aliens who face deportation. Repeatedly, the federal courts in California have struck down the rule, saying that it exceeds the INS’s legal authority. The court said that it will hear the government’s appeal in the fall.

--Turned down without comment a key Iran-Contra scandal figure’s challenge of his drunken driving conviction (Secord vs. Virginia, 90-1268). Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord contended that faulty dental work--not intoxication--had caused the Breathalyzer to measure his blood alcohol level at 0.20%.

Secord had produced an expert witness at his circuit court hearing who testified that poor dental work caused Secord’s gums to act as “flaps” over his bridgework, retaining alcohol in the porous cement areas that bonded the bridgework to his mouth. The witness said that if Secord had consumed alcoholic beverages within 24 hours of being stopped by police, he could have retained alcohol in his mouth that would have been “dislodged” by blowing into a breathalyzer, thus giving a false reading.

Secord, an arms dealer, was convicted last year of concealing a $13,800 payment which allowed former White House aide Oliver L. North to build a security fence around his home.

--Agreed to settle a boundary dispute between Alaska and the U.S. government that arose over 1,000 acres of submerged land (U.S. vs. Alaska, No. 118). The hard rock in the disputed area could contain gold, state officials said. Since it is more than three miles off shore, U.S. officials claim it. But state officials say that a causeway built out from Nome extends the state’s boundary and puts the submerged acres within its territory.

--Agreed to decide whether the Environmental Protection Agency can permit the dumping of treated sewage into interstate waterways (EPA vs. Oklahoma, 90-1266). Last year a federal appeals court ruled that the EPA erred in letting an Arkansas town dump sewage into a scenic river that flowed into Oklahoma. But U.S. attorneys say that the court erred by second-guessing the judgment of EPA regulators.