Justice Clarence Thomas, the lone African American on the court, dissented, saying that the evidence that prosecutors acted improperly was not strong enough to overturn Foster’s conviction.
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The controversial case took the court almost seven months to decide after oral argument in November. They also named some of the jurors they believed were kept off that jury, including longtime Rome resident Eddie Hood.
The case will return to Georgia state court, where the now 47-year-old will have the opportunity to argue for a new trial.
The case is Foster v. Chatman, 14-8349. His 1987 trial began only months after the high court set out rules prohibiting racial discrimination in jury selection in the 1986 case of Batson v. Kentucky.
The state of Georgia argued prosecutors had reasons for removing the potential jurors from the pool and said the notes were there to make sure prosecutors were following the ruling.
“Prosecutors were motivated in substantial part by race”, when they struck African-American jurors from the jury pool, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.
Stephen Bright, Foster’s counsel of record, noted correctly in a statement Monday morning that this decision would not end jury selection discrimination.
Monday, the justices ruled 7-1 in favor of death row inmate Timothy Tyrone Foster in underscoring the importance of rules that they laid out in 1986 to prevent racial discrimination in the selection of juries. Foster was later indicted for sexually assaulting and strangling the 79-year old widow. And it upheld a lower court’s decision that a new congressional redistricting plan was warranted in Virginia because of racial gerrymandering by the General Assembly.
“In addition, the focus on race in the prosecution’s file plainly demonstrates a concerted effort to keep black prospective jurors off the jury”, Roberts wrote.
MS justices heard more than an hour of arguments, and did not say when they would rule.
The outcome probably will enable Foster to win a new trial, 30 years after he was sentenced to death.
The court’s decision reverses a Georgia state supreme court order denying Foster appellate review of his death sentence, and remands the case “for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion”. Unless, of course, there’s a clear indication that lawyers are doing so for reasons pertaining to a potential juror’s race, sex or ethnicity, according to Cornell University Law School. “The exclusion of black citizens from jury service results in juries that do not represent their communities and undermines the credibility and legitimacy of the criminal justice system”.
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He was convicted and handed a death sentence which he has been fighting ever since. This wasn’t a case where there was a suspicion of discrimination; this was one where there was clear, unequivocal evidence that the prosecution was executing a complete and systematic commitment to excluding black jurors. The court said the clock on such lawsuits does not start ticking until the employee resigns.
