Arnold Holloway, a Pennsylvania death row inmate who was con­vict­ed 18 years ago, was grant­ed a new tri­al after a fed­er­al appeals court found that pros­e­cu­tors improp­er­ly exclud­ed blacks from the jury. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said that an assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney in Holloway’s case used 11 of his 12 peremp­to­ry strikes dur­ing jury selec­tion to elim­i­nate blacks. ​“The pat­tern here was cer­tain­ly strong enough to sug­gest an inten­tion of keep­ing blacks off the jury,” said Circuit Judge Robert Cowen. Philadelphia pros­e­cu­tors’ jury-selec­tion prac­tices came under clos­er scruti­ny in 1997 when a heat­ed cam­paign for the city’s dis­trict attor­ney’s office result­ed in the pub­lic release of a secret train­ing video instruct­ing rook­ie pros­e­cu­tors to keep poor blacks off juries because they were less like­ly to con­vict. Since that time, there has been a string of at least five death row inmates grant­ed new tri­als because of evi­dence that Philadelphia pros­e­cu­tors used race bias in select­ing jurors. (Associated Press, January 23, 2004) See Race; and DPIC’s Report: The Death Penalty in Black and White.

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