Ricks v. Texas: Stay Application Raises Batson Due Process Question

On March 6, 2026, attorney Jeremy Don Schepers submitted an application to Justice Alito seeking a stay of Cedric Ricks’s execution. The application, filed under No. 25A983, asks the Court to halt the execution while Ricks pursues his claim that Texas’s successive habeas statute unconstitutionally prevented him from litigating a Batson challenge to race-based jury selection.

Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 11.071 § 5 restricts successive state habeas petitions to claims meeting narrow exceptions. Ricks contends his Batson claim was never properly heard on the merits because the procedural bar was applied in a manner that denied him a meaningful opportunity to litigate racial discrimination in jury selection.

The core legal question is whether a state procedural rule can constitutionally foreclose a capital defendant’s Batson claim when the defendant had no prior adequate opportunity to develop and present it. This sits at the intersection of procedural default doctrine and the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process. A stay application directed to a single Justice carries no precedential weight on its own, but the underlying question could attract the full Court’s attention if Alito refers the application to the conference.

The case warrants attention from those following capital habeas litigation. Its interaction with constitutional claims rooted in Batson v. Kentucky raises questions about the adequacy of state procedural grounds. Whether the Court views this as a vehicle for addressing those questions will become clearer if the application is referred or acted upon in the coming days.