Commentary: Tennessee’s Commitment to Racial Justice Tested as Attorney General Continues to Push for Execution in Case Rife with Racial Bias

Declaring that “[r]acism still exists and has no place in soci­ety,” the Tennessee Supreme Court on June 25, 2020 direct­ed its Access to Justice Commission (AJC) to cre­ate ​“a new ini­tia­tive to iden­ti­fy and elim­i­nate bar­ri­ers to racial and eth­nic fair­ness and jus­tice.” The court’s pro­nounce­ment, at the height of the racial jus­tice protests that swept the nation fol­low­ing the mur­der of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police offi­cer, was meant to sig­nal its con­cern about racial bias in the legal system.

For these words to be more than sym­bol­ic, com­men­ta­tors have respond­ed, they must be backed up by action. And, they say, redress­ing the racial dis­crim­i­na­tion that sent Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman to Tennessee’s death row is a good place to begin.

In a July 22 com­men­tary in Tennessee Lookout, Dr. Sekou Franklin (pic­tured), a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence and inter­na­tion­al rela­tions at Middle Tennessee State Univesity, detailed what he called ​“a trou­bling pat­tern of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and racial bias” that infect­ed Abdur’Rahman’s tri­al. One week lat­er, in a guest col­umn in The Tennessean, vet­er­an defense lawyer Jim Thomas assailed the con­tin­u­ing ​“extra­or­di­nary efforts” being made by Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery to undo a court-approved plea deal that would remove Abdur’Rahman from death row because of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, inef­fec­tive defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al race-based use of jury strikes to exclude Black jurors from serv­ing on the case. 

The goal of those efforts, Thomas wrote, is sim­ply ​“to kill a Black man whose tri­al was indis­putably taint­ed by racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in the jury selec­tion process.” Writes Franklin, ​“If the AJC is com­mit­ted to address­ing racial jus­tice, it can start with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and the ongo­ing legal dis­pute over Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman’s … death penalty conviction.”

Abdur’Rahman was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Nashville in 1987 for a bloody dou­ble stab­bing in which one per­son was killed. The state and fed­er­al courts ini­tial­ly upheld his con­vic­tion, but in September 2019, after his death war­rant had been signed, Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk and defense lawyers reached a set­tle­ment in which Abdur’Rahman would receive a life sen­tence in exchange for not seek­ing a new tri­al. Funk told Davidson County Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins at the time that “[t]he pur­suit of jus­tice is incom­pat­i­ble with decep­tion” and con­ced­ed that Abdur’Rahman’s tri­al had been infect­ed by ​“overt racial bias.” 

The tri­al court approved the set­tle­ment, but Slater then sought to inter­vene, claim­ing that the District Attorney and the court had no author­i­ty to dis­turb Abdur’Rahman’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. In oral argu­ment in the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals on June 9, Slatery’s office nev­er addressed the evi­dence of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and racial bias in the case. Instead, it argued that Abdur’Rahman’s death sen­tence should be rein­stat­ed in the inter­ests of ​“final­i­ty.”

Franklin’s com­men­tary says that “[t]he court’s AJC’s new racial jus­tice ini­tia­tive has promise, but only if the group has the courage to address sys­temic racism. Racialized polic­ing, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, taint­ed jury pools, wrong­ful con­vic­tions, harsh sen­tenc­ing laws and racial­ly con­ser­v­a­tive atti­tudes pro­duce a con­sor­tium of injus­tice that deter­mines who lives and dies.” Pointing to evi­dence of injus­tice in the case, he says, “[a]s a good-faith mea­sure, the AJC must sup­port the con­sent order that can­cels Abdur’Rahman’s death sentence.”

Franklin notes that, in a bloody pair of stab­bings, a foren­sic analy­sis by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) found that Abdur’Rahman had no blood stains on his clothes. Prosecutor John Zimmerman, how­ev­er, with­held that TBI report from the defense and offered Abdur’Rahman’s co-defen­dant a six-year sen­tence in exchange for tes­ti­fy­ing that Abdur’Rahman wield­ed the knife. Zimmerman also ​“false­ly accused Abdur’Rahman of want­i­ng to take over the Nashville drug trade,” Franklin says, and in ​“a dog-whistling tac­tic prob­a­bly intend­ed to pro­voke neg­a­tive views about Black crim­i­nal­i­ty among the White jurors,” Zimmerman told the jury Abdur’Rahman had been wear­ing a ​“dark ​‘gang­ster coat’” at the time of the murder.

Franklin also not­ed that Zimmerman, who had dur­ing one train­ing ses­sion he taught advo­cat­ed the race-based use of jury strikes, struck African Americans from the jury in Abdur’Rahman’s case, ques­tion­ing ​“their ​‘intel­li­gence’ and academic qualifications.” 

In his col­umn, Thomas said that what he found ​“most strik­ing” in Slatery’s efforts to exe­cute Abdur’Rahman ​“was the extra­or­di­nary lev­el of cyn­i­cism” in active­ly inter­ven­ing in a case to car­ry out a racial­ly taint­ed death sen­tence. “[W]hatever the out­come of the attor­ney general’s mis­be­got­ten appeal,” Thomas wrote, ​“the state’s games­man­ship in its efforts to achieve final­i­ty for Abdur’Rahman, despite the racial ani­mus that per­vad­ed his tri­al, is a dis­cred­it to the fair and impar­tial admin­is­tra­tion of justice.”