Keep that in mind as we go on through the news that the Supreme Court Monday, by a 7-1 vote, Mr. Justice Thomas dissenting, ordered that a man named Timothy Foster, now residing on death row in Georgia, be given a new trial, as explained by Jess Bravin of The Wall Street Journal.
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Foster, who is black, was accused of sexually assaulting and killing a 79-year-old white woman at age 18.
The Supreme Court ordered the case returned to state court, where Foster’s lawyers will call for a new trial.
According to Foster’s lawyer, Stephen Bright, one handwritten note titled “Definite Nos” listed six people, of whom five were the remaining black prospective jurors, the Associated Press reported.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday morning in favor of a death row inmate in a case concerning race discrimination in jury selection.
Speaking in Washington, Chief Justice John Roberts said evidence from the trial “plainly belie the state’s claim that it exercised its strikes [the removal of a potential juror] in a “color blind” manner”.
Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenting judge, arguing that the Supreme Court never should have heard the case based on procedural grounds.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote a concurring opinion that backed up the other justices’ conclusion but with slightly different reasoning, in a way that seems to be more deferential to state court. Justice Thomas sees no discrimination here.
The prosecution gave reasons for excluding potential black jurors including that they “did not make enough eye contact” during questioning and were “bewildered”, “hostile”, “defensive”, “nervous” and “impudent”. They said that a statement was made by the prosecutor to the jury, stating the death sentence should be imposed to “deter other people out there in the projects from doing the same thing”.
The Supreme Court’s decision may have overturned the jury’s verdict, but it did not rethink peremptory strikes, the reason black potential jurors were kept off Foster’s jury in the first place. “Today’s decision shows the court is willing to step in to correct egregious injustices even from decades ago”, said Tom Goldstein, a Supreme Court expert and publisher of the SCOTUSBlog website.
“The court today invites state prisoners to go searching for new “evidence” by demanding the files of the prosecutors who long ago convicted them.I can not go along with that ‘sort of sandbagging of state courts, ‘” Thomas wrote.
The state trial court denied Foster’s request for a new trial, finding that his Batson claim was barred because it had been raised previously but also that it failed because it was “without merit”. The decision broke no new ground in efforts to fight racial discrimination in jury selection, but underscored the importance of a 30-year-old high court ruling that took aim at the exclusion of minorities from juries. “Two peremptory strikes on the basis of race are two more than the Constitution allows”, he concluded.
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“We obtained the prosecution’s notes which revealed their intent to discriminate. Even after the undeniable evidence of discrimination was presented in this case, the Georgia courts ignored it and upheld Foster’s conviction and death sentence”. An investigator working for the prosecution advised prosecutors that “if it comes down to having to pick one of the black jurors”, then one in particular “might be okay”. The practice, regrettably, will continue in courtrooms across the country as courts ignore patterns of race discrimination and accept false reasons for the strikes.
