Commonwealth v. Soares decision finds discrimination in the state’s jury selection process.

Supreme Judicial Court, in a case that involved the murder of a white Harvard student by African-American men in the city’s “Combat Zone,” rules that the prosecution exceeded its authority by using its peremptory challenges to exclude 12 of the 13 black men in the jury pool from serving on the jury. The ruling contradicts one by the Supreme Court in Swain v. Alabama in 1965.