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.

After driving to a deserted grove, Witt and his accomplice removed the lifeless child in the trunk and slit his stomach to prevent bloating.

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 excluded for cause because of their opposition to capital punishment."

The Court found that Witt's Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights were not violated by the voir dire process that took place before the trial began.

They effectively found that the court does have a right to ask a juror to step down pretrial if in fact their beliefs do affect the verdict of the trial in any way.

For example, Knighton v. Maggio, Witherspoon v. Illinois, and Woodward v. Hutchins were cases in which all the defendants claimed their Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated and all of their appeals were denied as well.

[1] What made the Witt vs. Wainwright case so significant was the fact that the court did find that the prosecutor, during one of the exchanges over voir dire, did not properly excuse one of the jurors for the "Witherspoon claim."

The juror, named Ms.Colby, stated that during the voir dire process, she thought that her judging of innocence or guilt may be affected due to the death penalty.

"[8] This is not to mention the voir dire process itself, which asks jurors about their morals and beliefs on the death penalty, which in itself suggests that the case will not only involve capital punishment, but also that the defendant is most likely guilty.

These standards have been researched, criticized, and even brought back to Supreme Court as evident in Lockhart v. McCree (1986) and Uttecht v. Brown (2007).