Petitioner, a black man, was convicted in an Illinois state court of attempted murder and other offenses by an all-white jury. During jury selection, the prosecutor used all 10 of his peremptory challenges to exclude blacks. Petitioner twice unsuccessfully moved for a mistrial, arguing that he was "entitled to a jury of his peers." The prosecutor defended the challenges by stating that he was trying to achieve a balance of men and women on the jury. After an unsuccessful state-court appeal, in which he argued that the prosecutors use of peremptory challenges denied him the right to be tried by a jury that was representative of the community, petitioner filed a habeas corpus petition in Federal District Court, repeating his fair cross section claim. He further argued that the opinions of several Justices concurring in, or dissenting from, the denial of certiorari in McCray v. New York, 461 U.S. 961, had invited a reexamination of Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, as to what a defendant must show to establish a prima facie case of discrimination with respe