SCOTUS Rejects Race As Sole Reason To Strike Jurors - Guess Who Dissented?
A Black man was convicted of capital murder by an all-White jury in 1987. The prosecutors made a point to write a "b" beside the names of all the Black people in the jury pool and also had an internal memo that distinctly said "if we had to pick a black juror" then they should try to take a specific one over the others. The Supreme Court determined that using race as the sole reason to disqualify a juror is unconstitutional. Of course, prosecutors have been doing that for 152 years, but seldom have they been stupid enough to put it in writing.
Well, the Court's decision was 7-1 and the only Justice to dissent was Clarence Thomas. I know he misses his buddy Antonin Scalia; perhaps this was his way of saluting him. But why does he have to be predictable in all matters. Roberts, Alito, and Kennedy all sided with the convicted man but the one person who thinks that American justice is kosher for Black folks is the only allegedly Black man on the bench.
Quote:
Washington [[CNN)The Supreme Court ruled Monday morning in favor of a death row inmate in a case concerning race discrimination in jury selection.
Timothy Tyrone Foster, an African-American, is on death row in Georgia for the 1987 murder of an elderly white woman, Queen Madge White. The jury that convicted him was all white. Twenty years after his sentence his attorneys obtained notes the prosecution team took while it was engaged in picking a jury, including marking potential jurors who were black had a "b" written by their name.
"The focus on race in the prosecution's file plainly demonstrates a concerted effort to keep black prospective jurors off the jury," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. Justice Clarence Thomas was the only dissenter.
