The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7 – 2 on March 19 that the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Allen Snyder should be over­turned because the tri­al judge allowed a poten­tial juror to be reject­ed on what appeared to be racial grounds. The deci­sion, writ­ten by Justice Samuel Alito, focused on the elim­i­na­tion of an African-American man from jury pan­el. The Court reject­ed the pros­e­cu­tion’s non-racial rea­sons for strik­ing this juror: ​“The implau­si­bil­i­ty of this expla­na­tion is rein­forced by the prosecutor’s accep­tance of white jurors who dis­closed con­flict­ing oblig­a­tions that appear to have been at least as seri­ous as Mr. Brooks’.”

Snyder, who is black, was tried by an all-white jury in Louisiana. During the pros­e­cu­tion’s clos­ing argu­ment, he made ref­er­ence to the sim­i­lar­i­ty between the present case and the O.J. Simpson case that had been recent­ly decid­ed, indi­cat­ing to the jurors that they should not let Snyder ​“get away” with this crime. The Supreme Court did not address that issue, but con­clud­ed, ​“For present pur­pos­es, it is enough to rec­og­nize that a pre­emp­to­ry strike shown to have been moti­vat­ed in sub­stan­tial part by dis­crim­i­na­to­ry intent could not be sus­tained based on any less­er show­ing by the pros­e­cu­tion.”

The case is Snyder v. Louisiana, No. 06 – 10119. (Scotus.blog, March 19, 2008). See Supreme Court and Race.

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