The original panel decision in this case reversing the order of the district court that denied the appellant Frank Teague’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus was vacated, United States ex rel. Teague v. Lane, 779 F.2d 1332 (7th Cir.1985), and the case set for rehearing en banc pursuant to Circuit Rule 16(e).1 We now affirm the order of the district court denying Teague’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
I
COFFEY, Circuit Judge.
Teague, a black man, was convicted after a jury trial in an Illinois court for attempted murder and armed robbery.2 In the process of selecting the Teague jury, the prosecution in the exercise of its peremptory challenges excluded ten black jurors. In the exercise of the defendant’s peremptory challenges, the only other black on the juror list was removed. The defendant initially challenged the State’s use of its peremptory challenges after the State had exercised six of its peremptories and again after jury selection was completed claiming that the State’s exclusion of all blacks from the jury deprived him of his right to “trial by a jury of his peers.” The trial court rejected the defendant’s argument that he was deprived of a “trial by his peers” stating that “the jury appears to be a fair jury” and the Illinois Court of Appeals affirmed the defendant’s conviction explaining that no restriction could be placed on a prosecutor’s exercise of peremptory challenges in the absence of a demonstration that blacks had been systematically excluded under the Swain v. Alabama test. People v. Teague, 108 Ill.App.3d 891, 64 Ill.Dec. 401, 439 N.E.2d 1066 (1st Dist.1982). The Illinois Supreme Court denied Teague’s Petition for Leave to Appeal, 93 Ill.2d 547 (1983), and the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari. 464 U.S. 867, 104 S.Ct. 206, 78 L.Ed.2d 179 (1983). Teague then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the federal district court. [834]*834The district court denied Teague’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus explaining that Teague’s claim that his constitutional rights were violated by the prosecution’s use of its peremptories was “foreclosed by Swain and the Seventh Circuit’s recent decisions in United States v. Clark [737 F.2d 679 (7th Cir.1984)], and United States ex rel. Palmer v. DeRobertis, [738 F.2d 168 (7th Cir.1984)].”
In Batson, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), the Supreme Court decided that “the Equal Protection Clause forbids the prosecutor to challenge potential jurors solely on account of their race or on the assumption that black jurors as a group will be unable impartially to consider the State’s case against a black defendant.”3 The Batson decision expressly overruled Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 85 S.Ct. 824, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965), but did not address the sixth amendment question concerning the right to a trial by an impartial jury. In Allen v. Hardy, — U.S. -, 106 S.Ct. 2878, 92 L.Ed.2d 199 (1986), the Supreme Court held that Batson was not to be applied “retroactively [to cases such as Teague’s] on collateral review of convictions that became final before our opinion [in Batson] was announced.”4 However, even if Batson were to be applied retroactively to Teague’s case, it would not control this court’s disposition of Teague’s petition for habeas corpus, since Teague challenges his conviction on sixth amendment5 grounds and does not raise an equal protection claim subject to the holdings in Batson and Allen6
II
In Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), the United States Supreme Court held that “The Equal Protection Clause forbids the prosecutor to challenge potential jurors solely on account of their race or on the assumption that black jurors as a group will be unable impartially to consider the State’s case against a black defendant.” Id. 106 S.Ct. at 1719. The Batson decision [835]*835adopted a new analysis for establishing whether the prosecution’s use of its peremptory challenges had violated the Equal Protection Clause and “reject[ed] this [the Swain v. Alabama] evidentiary formulation [for establishing Equal Protection violation] as inconsistent with standards that have been developed since Swain for assessing a prima facie case under the Equal Protection Clause.” Id. Under Batson,
“a defendant may establish a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination in selection of the petit jury solely on evidence concerning the prosecutor’s exercise of peremptory challenges at the defendant’s trial. To establish such a case, the defendant first must show that he is a member of a cognizable racial group, Castaneda v. Partida, supra, 430 U.S. [582] at 494, 97 S.Ct. [1272] at 1280 [51 L.Ed.2d 498 (1977) ], and that the prosecutor has exercised peremptory challenges to remove from the venire members of the defendant’s race. Second, the defendant is entitled to rely on the fact, as to which there can be no dispute, that peremptory challenges constitute a jury selection practice that permits ‘those to discriminate who are of a mind to discriminate.’ Avery v. Georgia, supra, 345 U.S. [559] at 562, 73 S.Ct. [891] at 892 [97 L.Ed. 1244 (1953)]. Finally, the defendant must show that these facts and any other relevant circumstances raise an inference that the prosecutor used that practice to exclude the veniremen from the petit jury on account of their race. This combination of factors in the empanelling of the petit jury, as in the selection of the venire, raises the necessary inference of purposeful discrimination.”
Id. at 1722-23. The Swain court refused to adopt a rule that would allow a criminal defendant to establish an Equal Protection violation simply by demonstrating that in his particular case, the prosecution had used its peremptories to remove all blacks from the jury actually empanelled to try the defendant:
“In the light of the purpose of a peremptory system and the function it serves in a pluralistic society in connection with the institution of jury trial, we cannot hold that the constitution requires an examination of the prosecutor’s reasons for the exercise of his challenges in any given case. The presumption in any particular case must be that the prosecutor is using the State’s challenges to obtain a fair and impartial jury to try the case before the court. The presumption is not overcome and the prosecutor therefore subjected to examination by allegations that in the case at hand all Negroes were removed from the jury or that they were removed because they were Negroes. Any other result, we think, would establish a rule wholly at odds with the peremptory challenge system as we know it. Hence the motion to strike the trial jury was properly denied in this case.”
380 U.S. at 223, 85 S.Ct. at 837. Instead, Swain required that a defendant seeking to establish an Equal Protection violation must demonstrate that the prosecutor systematically used his peremptories to exclude Blacks or other suspect classes from petit juries in case after case, and not just that all Blacks were peremptorily removed from the jury in the particular defendant’s case:
“We have decided that it is permissible to insulate from the inquiry the removal of Negroes of a particular jury on the assumption that the prosecutor is acting on acceptable considerations related to the case he is trying, a particular defendant involved and the particular crime charged. But when the prosecutor in a county, in case after case, whatever the circumstances, whatever the crime and whoever the defendant or the victim may be, is responsible for the removal of Negroes who have been selected as qualified jurors and the jury commissioners and who survive challenges for cause, with the result that no Negroes ever serve on petit juries, the Fourteenth Amendment claim takes on added significance.”
Id. (emphasis added).
Batson rejected this approach as a requirement for establishing an Equal Protection violation based on the prosecutor’s use of [836]*836peremptory challenges. The court explained that Swain: “Placed on defendants the crippling burden of proof” and thus “prosecutors peremptory challenges are now arguably immune of constitutional scrutiny.” 106 S.Ct. at 1720-21 (footnote omitted). Accordingly, the court in Batson rejected the Swain court’s “evidentiary formulation [for establishing that a prosecutor used its peremptories for a constitutionally impermissible purpose] as inconsistent with standards that have developed since Swain for assessing a prima facia case under the Equal Protection Clause.” Id. at 1719.
The Batson decision makes clear that the court decided the case on equal protection grounds and declined to rule on Batson’s claimed sixth amendment violation:
“We agree with the State that resolution of the petitioner’s claim properly turns on application of equal protection principles and express no view on the merits of any of petitioner’s Sixth Amendment arguments.”
Batson, 106 S.Ct. at 1716 n. 4.7 Although in Batson a criminal defendant was allowed to establish a violation of the equal protection clause by alleging, as Teague has, that the prosecution exercised its peremptories solely on the basis of a prospective juror’s race, the Supreme Court's Allen v. Hardy, — U.S.-, 106 S.Ct. 2878, 92 L.Ed.2d 199 (1986) decision, precludes an application of the Batson rule to Teague’s appeal. In Allen, decided just two months after Batson, the court held that Batson did not apply “retroactively on collateral review of convictions that became final before our opinion [in Batson] was announced.” The court went on to explain that:
“By final we mean where the judgment of conviction was rendered, the availability of appeal exhausted, and the time for petition for certiorari had elapsed before our decision in Batson v. Kentucky.”
Id. at n. 1. Teague’s appeals were rejected by the Illinois appellate courts and his petition for writ of certiorari from the United States Supreme Court was denied on October 3, 1983. See Teague v. Illinois, 464 U.S. 867, 104 S.Ct. 206, 78 L.Ed.2d 179 (1983). Thus, Teague’s case is “final” for purposes of applying Batson retroactively and therefore our review of Teague’s appeal is limited solely to his sixth amendment argument, an argument the Supreme Court declined to consider in Batson.
Essentially, Teague relies on Smith v. Texas, 311 U.S. 128, 61 S.Ct. 164, 85 L.Ed. 84 (1940), and subsequent Supreme Court decisions, to argue that the “fair cross section of the community” requirement as found in the sixth amendment is applicable to jury pools from which the petit jury is selected to reflect the trial community and must likewise be applied to the jury ultimately empanelled (petit jury) for trial. Teague asserts that the use of peremptory challenges to exclude certain classes of a community from the petit jury in effect undermines the Supreme Court’s fair cross-section requirement in the jury pool and contravenes the very idea of a jury composed of the peers and equals of the person on trial. Teague acknowledges that the Supreme Court in Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975), refused to extend the fair cross-sec[837]*837tion requirement to the petit jury, but maintains that two Supreme Court cases, Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 90 S.Ct. 1893, 26 L.Ed.2d 446 (1970), and Ballew v. Georgia, 435 U.S. 223, 98 S.Ct. 1029, 55 L.Ed.2d 234 (1978), addressing the small number of jurors on petit juries support his argument that the sixth amendment requires the fair cross section principle be applied to petit juries as well as the jury pools they are drawn from. Teague asserts that Williams v. Florida, stands for the proposition that the sixth amendment requires that the petit jury must be selected pursuant to procedures that provide a “fair possibility” of obtaining a petit jury representative of the community. Accordingly, Teague reads the Supreme Court’s determination in Ballew v. Georgia, that a trial by jury of less than six persons8 violates the sixth amendment because it in effect mathematically decreases the opportunity for meaningful representation of a cross section of the community as supporting his position. Teague interprets Ballew as meaning that the use of peremptory challenges to remove prospective jurors on the basis of race alone violates the sixth amendment since exercising one’s peremptory challenges on the basis of race alone decreases the “opportunity” for minority representation on the petit jury and thereby prevents the jury from reflecting a fair cross-section of the community. Therefore, according to Teague, the use of peremptories to remove prospective jurors on the basis of race alone violates the sixth amendment since the petit jury ultimately empanelled does not reflect a fair cross-section of the community.
Teague’s argument that the petit jury should be considered the same as the jury pool for purposes of the fair cross-section requirement rests on the mistaken assumption that the word “impartial” as used in the sixth amendment requires that the petit jury reflect a cross-section of the community from which it is drawn. Teague has not argued to this court nor any of the other courts that have heard his case, that the jury that tried him was not impartial. Rather, he asserts only that the jury in his case did not represent a cross-section of the community wherein he was tried. We refuse to break new ground and read such a requirement into the sixth amendment for the decisions of the United States Supreme Court to date fail to support such an argument. Since we agree with the United States Supreme Court and not with Teague’s theory that the sixth amendment requires that the petit jury be identical to the community where the jury is drawn from, we reject Teague’s assertion that the prosecutor’s use of his peremptories to remove ten prospective black jurors from the petit jury violated his sixth amendment right to trial by an impartial jury.
The sixth amendment provides that: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed____”
The United States Supreme Court has consistently interpreted the sixth amendment right to trial by an impartial jury to require a jury that is “indifferent” and that the petit jury be selected from a “fair cross-section of the community:” “In essence, the right to jury trial guarantees to the criminally accused a fair trial by a panel of impartial, ‘indifferent’ jurors,” Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 723, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 1642, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961), and “A fair possibility for obtaining a jury constituting a representative cross section of the community.” Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 529, 95 S.Ct. 692, 697, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975). In Taylor, the court explained:
“The unmistakable import of this court’s opinions, at least since 1940, Smith v. Texas, supra, and not repudiated by intervening decisions, is that the selection of a petit jury from a representative cross section of the community is an essential component of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. Recent federal legislation governing jury selection [838]*838within the federal court system has a similar thrust. Shortly prior to this court’s decision in Duncan v. Louisiana, supra [391 U.S. 145, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 20 L.Ed.2d 491 (1968)], the Federal Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968 was enacted. In that Act, Congress stated ‘The policy of the United States that all litigants in Federal courts entitled to trial by jury shall have the right to grand petit juries selected at random from a fair cross section of the community in the district or division wherein the court convenes.’ 28 U.S.C. § 1861. In that Act, Congress also established the machinery by which the stated policy was to be implemented. 28 U.S.C. §§ 1862 through 1866. Passing this legislation, the Committee Reports of both the House and the Senate recognized that the jury plays a political function in the administration of the law and that the requirement of a jury’s being chosen from a cross section of the community was fundamental to the American system of justice. Debate on the floors of the House and Senate on the Act invoked the Sixth Amendment, the Constitution generally, and prior decisions of this Court in support of the Act.”
419 U.S. at 529-31, 95 S.Ct. at 697-98 (footnotes omitted). Although the Supreme Court has interpreted the sixth amendment to require that the jury in a criminal trial be chosen from a jury pool that represents a fair cross-section of the community, it has never interpreted the explicit command of the sixth amendment that the petit jury itself be “impartial” to require that the petit jury actually represent each and every element of the community from which it is selected. Instead, the fair cross-section requirement, like all constitutionally mandated characteristics of the jury, has its origins in the purposes the Supreme Court has interpreted the sixth amendment right to jury trial to serve:
“The purpose of the jury is to guard against the exercise of arbitrary power— to make available the common sense judgment of the community as a hedge against the over zealous or mistaken prosecutor and in preference to the professional or perhaps overconditioned or biased response of the judge. This prophylactic vehicle is not provided if the jury pool is made up of only special segments of the populace or if large, distinctive groups are excluded from the pool. Community participation in the administration of the criminal law, moreover, is not only consistent with our democratic heritage, but is also critical to public confidence in the fairness of the criminal justice system.”
Taylor, 419 U.S. at 531, 95 S.Ct. at 698 (citation omitted). Contrary to Teague’s assertion that the Supreme Court decisions in Williams and Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404, 92 S.Ct. 1628, 32 L.Ed.2d 184 (1972), require us to apply the fair cross-section requirement to the petit jury, those decisions, as well as the decisions in Ballew and Burch v. Louisiana, 441 U.S. 130, 99 S.Ct. 1623, 60 L.Ed.2d 96 (1979), require only that the jury selection process provide for the “possibility” that the jury empanelled reflect a fair cross-section of the community. The decisions of the Supreme Court make clear that absent a pattern of systematic exclusion of a particular class from the petit jury, no constitutional wrong has occurred.9 As the court explained in Apodaca:
“There are two flaws in this argument [that the fair cross-section requirement requires a unanimous verdict]. One is petitioners’ assumption that every distinct voice in the community has a right to be represented on every jury and a right to prevent conviction of a defendant in any case. All that the Constitution forbids, however, is systematic exclusion of identifiable segments of the community from jury panels and from the juries ultimately drawn from those panels; a defendant may not, for example, challenge the makeup of a jury merely because no members of his race are on [839]*839the jury, but must prove that his race has been systematically excluded. See Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 208-209, 85 S.Ct. 824, 829, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965); Cassell v. Texas, 339 U.S. 282, 286-287, 70 S.Ct. 629, 631, 94 L.Ed. 839 (1950); Akins v. Texas, 325 U.S. 398, 403-404, 65 S.Ct. 1276, 1279, 89 L.Ed. 1692 (1945); Ruthenberg v. United States, 245 U.S. 480, 38 S.Ct. 168, 62 L.Ed. 414 (1918). No group, in short, has the right to participate in the overall legal processes by which criminal guilt and innocence are determined.”
406 U.S. at 413, 92 S.Ct. at 1634.
However, the Supreme Court decisions distinguish between the requirement that jury pools reflect a fair cross-section of the community and the requirement that a pet-it jury be impartial:
“Trial by jury presupposes a jury drawn from a pool broadly representative of the community as well as impartial in a specific case.”
Thiel v. Southern Pacific Company, 328 U.S. 217, 227, 66 S.Ct. 984, 989, 90 L.Ed.2d 1181 (1946) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) (adopted by Court in Taylor, 419 U.S. at 531, 95 S.Ct. at 698) (emphasis added). Indeed, the Supreme Court has gone so far as to state:
“It is fundamental in questioning the composition of a jury that a mere showing that a class was not represented in a particular jury is not enough.”
Fay v. New York, 332 U.S. 261, 285, 67 S.Ct. 1613, 1626, 91 L.Ed. 2043 (1947) (emphasis added). And the court in Taylor read its prior decisions concerning jury composition and the fair cross-section requirement as specifically limiting the fair cross-section requirement to the jury pool from which the petit jury was ultimately empanelled:
“It should also be emphasized that in holding that petit juries must be drawn from a source fairly representative of the community we impose no requirement that petit juries actually chosen must mirror the community and reflect the various distinctive groups in the population. Defendants are not entitled to a jury of any particular composition.”
419 U.S. at 538,. 95 S.Ct. at 702 (citation omitted).
Thus, the decisions of the United States Supreme Court to date make clear that the fair cross-section requirement of the sixth amendment does not apply to the petit jury itself, and we are not persuaded that sufficient reasons or facts presented to us in this record give reason for us to expand the scope of the Supreme Court’s holdings in Teague’s case. Several factors mandate against such an unwarranted expansion. First, the process of random selection may result in the under — or over representation of particular groups on a venire and the removal of jurors for cause likewise may result in the under — or over representation of a particular group on a petit jury in a given case. Second, the requirement that a specific group be represented on any given petit jury would necessarily entail tremendous administrative problems in the empanelling of a jury; in each case, the trial court would be called upon to expend a greater amount of time in order to ascertain the race, nationality, religion, occupation, and other characteristics of members of the community in relation to the facts and circumstances of the case on trial and determine which groups of the population were relevant, and thus essential to the composition of each and every petit jury. As we noted in Clark, “[t]he potential for stretching out criminal trials that are already too long, by making the voir dire a Title VII proceeding in miniature” is one of several practical considerations against requiring that the petit jury represent a cross section of the community. 737 F.2d at 682. See also Saltzburg and Powers, Peremptory Challenges and the Clash Between Impartiality and Group Representation, 41 Md. L.Rev. 337, 347-48 n. 47 (1982). The Supreme Court acknowledged these problems in a footnote in Batson:
“Similarly, though the Sixth Amendment guarantees that a petit jury will be selected from a pool of names representing a cross-section of the community, Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522 [95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.Ed.2d 690] (1975), we have never [840]*840held that the Sixth Amendment requires that ‘petit juries actually chosen must mirror the community and reflect the various distinctive groups in the population,’ Id. at 538 [95 S.Ct. at 702]. Indeed, it would be impossible to apply a concept of proportional representation to the pet-it jury in view of the heterogeneous nature of our society. Such a possibility is illustrated by the court’s holding that a jury of six persons is not unconstitutional. Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 102-103 [90 S.Ct. 1893, 1907, 26 L.Ed.2d 446] (1970).”
Batson, 106 S.Ct. at 1717 n. 6. In Lockhart v. McCree, 476 U.S. 162, 106 S.Ct. 1758, 90 L.Ed.2d 137 (1986), the Supreme Court further explained its reasons for not applying the fair cross-section requirement to the petit jury:
“we do not believe that the fair cross-section requirement can, or should, be applied as broadly as that court attempted to apply it. We have never invoked the fair cross-section principle to invalidate the use of either for-cause or peremptory challenges to prospective jurors, or to require petit juries, as opposed to jury panels or venires, to reflect the composition of the community at large. See Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 363-364, 99 S.Ct. 664, 668, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979); Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 538, 95 S.Ct. 692, 701-02, 42 L.Ed.2d 690 (1975) (‘[W]e impose no requirement that petit juries actually chosen must mirror the community and reflect the various distinctive groups in the population’); cf. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, _, n. 4, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 1716, n. 4, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986) (expressly declining to address ‘fair cross-section’ challenge to discriminatory use of peremptory challenges). The limited scope of the fair cross-section requirement is a direct and inevitable consequence of the practical impossibility of providing each criminal defendant with a truly ‘representative’ petit jury, see id., at-, n. 6,106 S.Ct., at 1717, n. 6, a basic truth that the Court of Appeals itself acknowledged for many years prior to its decision in the instant case. See United States v. Childress, 715 F.2d 1313 (CA8 1983) (en banc), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 1063, 104 S.Ct. 744, 79 L.Ed.2d 202 (1984); Pope v. United States, 372 F.2d 710, 725 (CA8 1967) (Blackmun, J.) (‘The point at which an accused is entitled to a fair cross-section of the community is when the names are put in the box from which the panels are drawn’), vacated on other grounds, 392 U.S. 651, 88 S.Ct. 2145, 20 L.Ed.2d 1317 (1968). We remain convinced that an extension of the fair cross-section requirement to petit juries would be unworkable and unsound, and we decline McCree’s invitation to adopt such an extension.”
Further, although we believe the fair cross-section requirement aids in the selection of an impartial jury, the requirement itself does not guarantee an impartial jury — and would not even if applied to the petit jury. Thus, the parties must have peremptory challenges available to them so that they might have the opportunity to eliminate any prospective juror whom they believe may not be impartial even though the jury was drawn from a pool representing a fair cross-section of the community. Further, peremptories help to ensure impartiality by compensating for the limitations inherent in the jury system itself; there is no guarantee that any group of twelve (or six) empanelled to try a case will reflect all attitudes, beliefs, etc. in a community. To prevent the unfairness of a trial heard by a panel of jurors slanted toward one view or another should chance so provide (i.e., random selection of the pool), the parties are allowed to exercise the right of the peremptory challenge in order that they might be able to select a jury that they believe will be impartial while serving their individual best interests in their sincere attempt to achieve justice. Peremptory challenges are consistent with the fair cross-section requirement to insure that the jury that ultimately tries the case will be impartial.
Moreover, many of the circuits that have addressed the issue of whether the fair cross section requirement of the sixth amendment mandates that the petit jury [841]*841mirror the community from which it is drawn have refused to extend the fair cross section requirement to the petit jury. See United States v. Thompson, 730 F.2d 82, 85 (8th Cir.1984), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 1024, 105 S.Ct. 443, 83 L.Ed.2d 369 (1984); Prejean v. Blackburn, 743 F.2d 1091, 1103-04 (5th Cir.1984); United States v. Witfield, 715 F.2d 145, 146-47 (4th Cir.1983); Weathersby v. Morris, 708 F.2d 1493, 1497 (9th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 1046, 104 S.Ct. 719, 79 L.Ed.2d 181 (1984). Cf. Willis v. Zant, 720 F.2d 1212, 1219 n. 14 (11th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1256, 104 S.Ct. 3546, 82 L.Ed.2d 849 (1984).
Finally, extending the fair cross-section requirement to the petit jury as Teague suggests would effectively undermine the use of peremptory challenges in criminal cases. We refuse to expand or enlarge the parameters of the Supreme Court decisions addressing the fair cross section requirement, for doing so would seriously disrupt the trial process as it currently exists, especially in view of the Supreme Court’s explicit statements that such an expansion is not justified. See Taylor; Fay. In Swain, the court outlined the history of the peremptory challenge from the days of the common law of England to the law as it has developed in the United States and concluded that:
“[T]he persistence of peremptories and their extensive use demonstrate the long and widely held belief that the peremptory challenge is a necessary part of trial by jury____ The [peremptory] challenge is ‘one of the most important of the rights secured to the accused.’ ”
Swain, 380 at 219, 85 S.Ct. at 835 (quoting Pointer v. United States, 151 U.S. 396, 14 S.Ct. 410, 38 L.Ed. 208 (1894)). But the right of the peremptory challenge is not limited to the accused. The Swain court recognized that: “The view in this country has been that the system should guarantee ‘not only freedom from any bias against the accused, but also from any prejudice against his prosecution. Between him and the state, the scales are to be evenly held.’ ” 380 U.S. at 220, 85 S.Ct. at 835 (quoting Hayes v. State of Missouri, 120 U.S. 68, 70, 7 S.Ct. 350, 351, 30 L.Ed. 578 (1887)).
The Swain court described the function of the peremptory challenge as
“Not only to eliminate extremes of partiality on both sides, but to assure the parties that the jurors before whom they try the case will decide on the basis of the evidence placed before them, and not otherwise. ... Indeed the very availability of peremptories allows counsel to ascertain the possibility of bias through probing questions on voir dire and facilitates the exercise of challenges for cause by removing the fear of incurring a juror’s hostility through examination and challenge for cause.”
380 U.S. at 219-20, 85 S.Ct. at 835. The court further noted, “The essential nature of the peremptory challenges is that it is one exercised without a reason stated, without inquiry and without being subject to the court’s control.” Id. at 220, 85 S.Ct. at 836. “ ‘[I]t is, as Blackstone says, an arbitrary and capricious right, and it must be exercised with full freedom or it fails of its full purpose.’ ” Id. at 219, 85 S.Ct. at 835 (quoting Lewis v. United States, 146 U.S. 370, 378, 13 S.Ct. 136, 139, 36 L.Ed. 1011 (1892)).
Teague’s argument that the fair cross-section requirement of the sixth amendment extends to the petit jury and restricts the use of peremptory challenges ignores the fact that the peremptory challenge is an essential tool not only to the prosecutor, but to the defendant as well, and their combined effort to obtain a fair and impartial petit jury in their search for the truth of the facts presented and ultimate justice for all. Any requirement that would interfere with the use of peremptory challenges would harm the defendant by disarming the defendant or his attorney of the ability to rely on intuitive feelings or past trial experience in selecting the jury that will pass judgment on the defendant. The
“system of peremptory [challenges]— challenges without cause, without explanation, and without judicial scrutiny — affords a suitable and necessary method of securing juries which in fact and in the [842]*842opinion of the parties are fair and impartial.”
Swain, 380 U.S. at 211-12, 85 S.Ct. at 831. And the peremptory challenge “ ‘is, as Blackstone says, an arbitrary and capricious right, and it must be exercised with full freedom, or it fails of its full purpose.’ ” Id. at 219, 85 S.Ct. at 835 (quoting Lewis v. United States, 146 U.S. 370, 378, 13 S.Ct. 136, 139, 36 L.Ed. 1011 (1892)). The sixth amendment literally provides, “in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury” (emphasis added). “In essence, the right to a jury trial guarantees to the criminally accused a fair trial by a panel of impartial, ‘indifferent’ jurors.” Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 722, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 1642, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961) (emphasis added). Although the sixth amendment provides protection only for the defendant, if we believe that the American system of justice is based on the premise that a jury trial is a search for the truth, we must acknowledge that both the prosecution and defendant are entitled to an impartial jury. Thus, the courts have recognized that “The State also enjoys the right to an impartial jury.” Spinkellink v. Wainwright, 578 F.2d 582, 596 (5th Cir. 1978), cert. denied, 440 U.S. 976, 99 S.Ct. 1548, 59 L.Ed.2d 796 (1979).
“The system should guarantee ‘not only freedom from any bias against the accused, but also from any prejudice against the prosecution. Between him and the State, the scales are to be evenly held.’ ”
Swain, 380 at 220, 85 S.Ct. at 835 (quoting Hayes v. State of Missouri, 120 U.S. 68, 70, 7 S.Ct. 350, 351, 30 L.Ed. 578 (1887)); Spinkellink, 578 F.2d at 596.
The peremptory challenge does not conflict with the right of a defendant to have his jury drawn from a representative jury pool. Both the peremptory challenge and the requirement of the representative venire advanced the constitutional goal of obtaining a fair and impartial jury in the undying quest and search for justice. And it may be that the requirement that a a jury venire or pool represent a fair cross-section of the community in fact increases the necessity of employing peremptories to obtain an impartial petit jury.
“In contrast to the course in England, where both peremptory challenge and challenge for cause have fallen into disuse, peremptories were and are freely used and relied upon in this country, perhaps because juries here are drawn from a greater cross section of a heterogeneous society.”
Swain, 380 U.S. at 218, 85 S.Ct. at 835. The Swain court acknowledged that the “peremptory challenge is a necessary part of trial by jury.” Id. The court recognized that the challenge for cause alone is insufficient to assure the impartiality of a jury in a given case.
“While challenges for cause permit rejection of jurors on a narrowly specified, provable and legally cognizable basis of partiality, the peremptory challenge permits rejection for a real or imagined partiality that is less easily designated or demonstrable.”
Id. at 220, 85 S.Ct. at 836. Thus, the courts have found it proper to exercise a peremptory challenge to exclude a juror who could not be dismissed for cause in the context of a given trial. See Dobbert v. Strickland, 718 F.2d 1518, 1524-25 (11th Cir.1983); Jordan v. Watkins, 681 F.2d 1067, 1070 (5th Cir.1982).
Finally, Teague’s argument that Williams and Ballew require us to extend the fair cross-section requirement to the petit jury is likewise unpersuasive. Although Williams and Ballew pertain specifically to the composition of petit juries, when viewed in the proper context, they militate against Teague’s assertion that the petit jury must contain a cross-section of the community: the six-person Florida jury approved in Williams certainly does not guarantee that the jury will consist of a representative cross-section of the community anymore than a 12-person jury. The Supreme Court in Williams stated:
“Even the 12-man jury cannot insure representation of every distinct voice in the community, particularly given the use of the peremptory challenge. As [843]*843long as arbitrary exclusions of a particular class from the jury rolls are forbidden ... the concern that the cross section will be significantly diminished if the jury is decreased in size from 12 to 6 seems an unrealistic one.”
399 U.S. at 102, 90 S.Ct. at 1907. The court nevertheless recognized in Ballew, “The opportunity for meaningful and appropriate representation does decrease with the size of the panels.” 435 U.S. at 237, 98 S.Ct. at 1037. Thus, it can hardly be doubted that the mathematical probability of obtaining a representative cross-section of the community is reduced when a jury is chosen consisting of six rather than 12 jurors. Notwithstanding the court’s recognition in Ballew that a five-person jury inhibits the goal of meaningful and appropriate representation on the petit jury, the court in Ballew declined to retreat from its holding in Williams. The Supreme Court thus recognized that merely decreasing the possibility of obtaining a fair cross-section of the community on the petit jury does not violate the sixth amendment right to a trial by an impartial jury. Further, the record is barren of any proof or testimony establishing community prejudice towards Teague.
The free and unrestrained exercise of peremptory challenges does not eliminate the possibility of obtaining a truly representative trial jury and thus does not violate the sixth amendment right to trial by an impartial jury. See Taylor, 419 U.S. at 529, 95 S.Ct. at 697 (sixth amendment requires “[a] fair possibility for obtaining a jury constituting a representative cross section of the community”). So long as the jury pool contains a fair cross-section of the community, the possibility of obtaining a representative trial jury remains regardless of how either party exercises its peremptory challenges. Since the sixth amendment requires only that a jury be impartial, we refuse to extend the fair cross-section requirement to require that the petit jury trying a criminal defendant reflect a fair cross-section of the community wherein the trial takes place. Requiring the petit jury to mirror the community will effectively undermine the value of the peremptory challenge without appreciably increasing the ability of the defendant or the prosecution to insure that the jury ultimately empanelled is impartial as required by the sixth amendment — all at the expense of the American jury system.
Ill
CONCLUSION
The sixth amendment provides the defendant in a criminal proceeding with the right to a trial by an impartial jury. The Supreme Court has determined that the right to trial by an impartial jury requires that the jury pool from which the petit jury is selected reflect a fair cross-section of the community so as to make possible and probable a petit jury representative of the community in which the defendant is tried. The Supreme Court has made clear, however, that the sixth amendment does not provide the criminal defendant with the right to a petit jury of any particular composition. Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 95 S.Ct. 692, 42 L.E.2d 690 (1975). Since we are not persuaded by the defendant’s argument nor the realities of trial that a petit jury that mirrors the community from which it is drawn guarantees an impartial jury, we are not willing to interpret the sixth amendment as prescribing limits on the prosecutor’s (or defendant’s) exercise of peremptory challenges. We are confident that all jurors, black, white, or any other race, creed or color, upon the taking of their oath are equally capable of performing their task impartially. To hold that the sixth amendment limits the use of peremptory challenges would undermine the use of peremptory challenges and impair the function of the jury in criminal trials without any demonstrable improvement in the impartiality of juries. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s order denying Teague’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus.