Newspaper edi­to­ri­als from papers in Texas and oth­er areas of the coun­try praised the Supreme Court’s rul­ing in the case of Thomas Miller-El and crit­i­cized the way in which the death penal­ty has been imple­ment­ed in Texas. Miller-El was grant­ed a new tri­al in light of strong evi­dence of racial bias dur­ing jury selec­tion at his orig­i­nal tri­al. Editorial excerpts fol­low:

New York Times

[Miller-El] is an impor­tant rul­ing that reit­er­ates to all courts the impor­tance of keep­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion out of jury selec­tion.
…
In the land­mark 1986 case Batson v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court set out guide­lines for how courts should exam­ine jury selec­tion for evi­dence of dis­crim­i­na­tion. In yes­ter­day’s case [Miller-El v. Dretke], the court did just that, and found that race had repeat­ed­ly played an inap­pro­pri­ate role. The court found clear dis­par­i­ties in every­thing from how prospec­tive jurors of dif­fer­ent races were ques­tioned to what fac­tors the pros­e­cu­tion con­sid­ered valid rea­sons for strik­ing them. The court repeat­ed­ly reject­ed the pros­e­cu­tors’ race-neu­tral expla­na­tions for their actions.
…
It is dis­turb­ing that before the Supreme Court heard Mr. Miller-El’s claim, it was denied by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which cov­ers Texas. The mis­con­duct in this case was clear enough that the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 to reverse, with the cen­trist con­ser­v­a­tives Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy join­ing the major­i­ty. It is a sign of how far the low­er fed­er­al courts have drift­ed to the right that the Supreme Court had to cor­rect this racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pros­e­cu­tion. (New York Times, June 14, 2005).

Washington Post

The Supreme Court reined in racial manip­u­la­tion in jury selec­tion yes­ter­day, throw­ing out the cap­i­tal con­vic­tion of a Texas man named Thomas Joe Miller-El.
…
Mr. Miller-El’s case con­front­ed the court with the ques­tion of how bla­tant­ly jury selec­tion may be guid­ed by race before it runs afoul of the Constitution. Prosecutors in Dallas, where Mr. Miller-El was pros­e­cut­ed for a vicious mur­der, had a his­to­ry of try­ing to keep blacks from jury ser­vice. A train­ing man­u­al in the 1960s instruct­ed them not to ​“take Jews, Negroes, Dagos, Mexicans or a mem­ber of any minor­i­ty race on a jury, no mat­ter how rich or how well edu­cat­ed.” Such poli­cies were no longer writ­ten down when Mr. Miller-El went on tri­al in 1986, but they lived on. … The machi­na­tions in Mr. Miller-El’s case, as the high court has now found, were obvi­ous. Prosecutors, Justice David H. Souter writes, ques­tioned black poten­tial jurors dif­fer­ent­ly from whites and shuf­fled the ros­ter to push blacks fur­ther back in the line of eli­gi­bil­i­ty. Of 11 who were nonethe­less deemed qual­i­fied, pros­e­cu­tors then struck 10 using peremp­to­ry chal­lenges.
…
[T]his rul­ing sends a strong mes­sage to pros­e­cu­tors and low­er courts alike that such manip­u­la­tions are not tol­er­a­ble. (Washington Post, June 14, 2005).

Dallas Morning News

The record shows that Mr. Miller-El, who is black, got a raw deal at tri­al. Prosecutors used var­i­ous tricks to effec­tive­ly elim­i­nate 91 per­cent of blacks in his jury pool.
District Attorney Bill Hill’s office can’t be sur­prised at the rul­ing, con­sid­er­ing that the court had telegraphed this punch. In an ear­li­er round on this case, the court brand­ed the dis­trict attor­ney’s office of 20 years ago as ​“suf­fused with bias.”
…
[P]rotecting one man’s right to tri­al by a jury of peers pro­tects us all.
…
Their long wait for jus­tice in the case is a result of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al shenani­gans that were only shrewd in the short term. A sol­id jus­tice sys­tem is built on a far broad­er foun­da­tion. (Dallas Morning News, June 14, 2005).

Houston Chronicle

In the man­ner of a long-suf­fer­ing par­ent faced with a disin­gen­u­ous­ly obstreper­ous child, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday told the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — one more time — how wrong it was in inter­pret­ing yet anoth­er major prin­ci­ple in cap­i­tal-pun­ish­ment cas­es.

Racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selec­tion, no mat­ter how Texas pros­e­cu­tors tried to hide the ugly prac­tice, is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, the court ruled, revers­ing an almost 20-year-old mur­der con­vic­tion from Dallas County.
…
​“It blinks real­i­ty” to find that prospec­tive black jurors were struck by pros­e­cu­tors for any rea­son oth­er than their race, the court said. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ find­ing oth­er­wise was ​“wrong to a clear and con­vinc­ing degree.” The state court’s ​“con­clu­sion was unrea­son­able as well as erro­neous.”
…
Texas’ full-throat­ed resort to the death penal­ty demands that all pro­ce­dures per­tain­ing to this max­i­mum pun­ish­ment be applied with the utmost, unques­tioned pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al integri­ty and that those oper­a­tions are reviewed by courts that can acknowl­edge what may be going on. (Houston Chronicle, June 14, 2005).

Read the com­plete deci­sion. See DPIC’s page on the Miller-El case. See also Race. To view a video (need RealPlayer) about the Miller-El case, click here.
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