Wainwright vs. Witt, 469 U.S. 412 (1985), was a U.S. Supreme Court case concerning a criminal defendant, Johnny Paul Witt, who argued that his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated when he was sentenced to death for first degree murder by the state of Florida. He argued that the trial court had unconstitutionally hand-picked a jury during the voir dire process. This was because certain people were excused from the jury because they admitted pre-trial, that their decision of guilty or not guilty toward capital punishment would be swayed due to personal or religious beliefs. Background Facts In 1974, the defendant, Johnny Paul Witt, was tried and convicted of first degree murder in the state of Florida. It was proven that the murder had taken place while the defendant and his accomplice Gary Tillman were bow and arrow hunting in the woods. The two friends admitted to talking about killing people frequently. They even occasionally stalked humans as prey in the woods for fun. While on their bow and arrow hunting trip, the two males eventually ended up stalking an 11-year-old boy named Johnathan Kushner riding his bike down a popular trail in the woods. From there, the accomplice hit the boy with a star bit from a drill stunning the child. Witt and his accomplice gagged the child and threw him in the back of his trunk where the child died from suffocation as a result of the gagging. After driving to a deserted grove, Witt and his accomplice removed the lifeless child in the trunk and slit his stomach to prevent bloating. After, Witt and Tillman performed violent acts on the body, and then buried it in a grave. Procedural history After being convicted of first degree murder on February 21, 1974, Witt was also sentenced to the death penalty. Witt appealed this sentence for five different issues which included the court not allowing evidence to prove insanity, the court's alleged use of non-record material in reviewing his sentence, the state forcing him to admit guilt before he was allowed the right to an attorney, and how the court relied on non-statutory aggravated circumstances however still sentenced him to capital punishment. All four of those mentioned claims were almost immediately thrown out. The only legitimate and significant appeal he made was his belief that the jury had been death qualified because three of the jurors were "improperly