Entries tagged with “Jury Selection”
Policy Issues
Race
,Feb 27, 2024
States’ Failure to Collect Juror Race Information Contributes to “Whitewashed” Jury Box, Berkeley Law Report Finds
A new report from Berkeley Law’s Death Penalty Clinic finds that just 19 states collect race and ethnicity information from prospective jurors, meaning that a majority of states cannot ensure that their juries are a “representative cross-section of the community” as mandated by the Constitution. The report, Guess Who’s Coming to Jury Duty?, recommends that all states “adopt a uniform questionnaire” to obtain prospective jurors’ race or ethnicity and that state courts annually publish…
Policy Issues
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Feb 20, 2024
Op-Ed: Law Professor Stephen Bright Encourages SCOTUS to Review “Egregious Racial Discrimination” in Georgia Death Row Prisoner’s Case
In a February 14, 2024 op-ed published in the Washington Post, the longtime defense lawyer, former director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, and law professor Stephen Bright highlights the continued illegal exclusion of Black jurors in violation of Batson v. Kennedy (1986). The op-ed titled, “Struck from a jury for being Black? It still happens all too often,” uses the case of Georgia death-sentenced prisoner Warren King, whose petition the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to review on…
Policy Issues
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Dec 20, 2023
Batson Relief for Another Mississippi Prisoner Prosecuted by Doug Evans
On December 12, 2023 U.S. District Judge Michael P. Mills overturned Terry Pitchford’s death sentence and ordered Mississippi to retry him in 6 months or release him from custody. Judge Mills found that the original trial judge failed to allow the defense to properly challenge the exclusion of Black jurors by now-retired District Attorney Doug Evans, the same prosecutor who prosecuted Curtis Flowers. “This court cannot ignore the notion that Pitchford was seemingly given no chance to rebut…
Policy Issues
Race
,Oct 20, 2022
Commentary: North Carolina’s Use of Death Qualification Disenfranchises Black People From Serving on Death Penalty Juries
The process of death qualification, which excludes people who oppose the death penalty from serving on capital juries, is racially discriminatory, civil rights advocate Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II wrote in an October 10, 2022…
Policy Issues
Race
,Sep 23, 2022
North Carolina ACLU Challenges Death Qualification of Jurors as Racially and Sexually Discriminatory
Lawyers for a North Carolina capital defendant have filed a sweeping challenge to the method by which death-penalty jurors are empaneled, arguing that the combination of a process known as “death qualification” and discretionary jury strikes produces a jury so racially and sexually unrepresentative that it violates a defendant’s right to a fair…
Policy Issues
Arbitrariness
,May 04, 2022
Jury Selection Chaos and Confusion Causes Further Delays in Parkland Shooting Capital Sentencing Trial
The capital sentencing trial of Nikolas Cruz in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (pictured) in Parkland, Florida has been delayed once again as jury selection in the high-profile case devolved into chaos and…
Policy Issues
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Sentencing Alternatives
,Mar 08, 2022
Nearly Six Years After Supreme Court Granted Him a New Trial, Timothy Foster Resentenced to Life
Timothy Foster, whose conviction and death sentence were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 because Georgia prosecutors discriminatorily struck Black jurors from serving in his case, has been resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of…
Policy Issues
Race
,Nov 11, 2021
Citing Race Discrimination, Nashville Judge Reverses Conviction of Tennessee Death-Row Prisoner Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman, Approves Plea Deal for Life Sentence
A Nashville judge has for a second time approved a plea deal that would remove Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman from Tennessee’s death row and resentence him to life without possibility of parole. On November 9, 2021, Davidson County Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins entered an order overturning Abdur’Rahman’s 1987 conviction based on former Davidson County Assistant District Attorney General John Zimmerman’s unconstitutional use of…
Facts & Research
United States Supreme Court
,Federal Death Penalty
,Oct 14, 2021
Supreme Court Hears Argument on Department of Justice Efforts to Reinstate Death Penalty in Boston Marathon Bombing Case
A United States Supreme Court sharply divided along ideological lines heard oral argument October 13, 2021 on the Department of Justice’s appeal of a federal circuit court’s ruling overturning the death sentences imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his convictions in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Veteran court watchers reported that the six conservative justices seemed poised to overturn the federal appeal court’s grant of a new penalty phase hearing to…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Race
,Sep 13, 2021
Death-Row Exoneree Curtis Flowers Sues Mississippi Prosecutor Who Prosecuted Him Six Times
Former Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Flowers (pictured), who was exonerated in 2020, is suing the officials whose misconduct led to his arrest and repeated wrongful conviction. Flowers was tried six times and spent 23 years wrongfully incarcerated for a quadruple murder in a white-owned furniture store in Winona, Mississippi. In a complaint filed September 3, 2021 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, Flowers alleges…
Policy Issues
Race
,Mar 12, 2021
Texas Federal Appeals Court Refuses to Consider Suppressed Evidence of Dallas Prosecutors’ Race-Based Jury Selection Practices, Upholds Conviction and Death Sentence
A federal appeals court has permitted a Texas district court to dismiss a death-row prisoner’s claim that Dallas prosecutors unconstitutionally struck Black jurors in his case without considering evidence of racial discrimination that prosecutors had withheld from the defense during state court litigation on the…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Race
,Representation
,Religion
,United States Supreme Court
,Women
,Feb 15, 2021
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of February 8, 2021
NEWS (2/11/21) — Alabama: In a splintered vote with three conservative justices noting their dissents, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Alabama Attorney General’s application to vacate a federal appeals court injunction that had halted that night’s scheduled execution of Willie B. Smith III unless the state permitted his pastor to be present in the death chamber to provide religious…
Policy Issues
Race
,Federal Death Penalty
,Nov 17, 2020
Lawyers for Orlando Hall Seek to Stay His Execution Based Upon Systemic and Case-Specific Evidence of Racial Discrimination
Lawyers for federal death-row prisoner Orlando Hall (pictured), who is scheduled to be executed on November 19, 2020, have filed a motion to stay his execution based upon evidence that his death sentence was a product of pervasive racial…
Policy Issues
Representation
,Oct 26, 2020
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of October 19, 2020
NEWS (10/22/20) — Florida: The Florida Supreme Court has upheld the conviction and death sentence for Daniel Craven, Jr. for a 2015 prison murder. The court denied Craven’s claims that he was unconstitutionally denied the right to represent himself and that the trial court had violated his right to a fair jury by impaneling an African-American juror whom defense counsel had attempted to peremptorily strike. It also rejected several challenges…
Policy Issues
Race
,Sep 28, 2020
North Carolina Supreme Court Restores Life Sentences to Three Prisoners Whose Death Sentences Violated Racial Justice Act
The North Carolina Supreme Court has ordered that three African American death-row prisoners who had proven that their death sentences violated the state’s since repealed Racial Justice Act (RJA) must be resentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. In three decisions issued on September 25, 2020, the court ruled that North Carolina had violated constitutional principles of double jeopardy and the prohibitions against after-the-fact…
Policy Issues
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,United States Supreme Court
,Apr 05, 2018
NEW PODCAST — Racial Discrimination in Death-Penalty Jury Selection: A Conversation with Steve Bright
Race discrimination exists at every stage of the death-penalty process, says veteran death-penalty and civil-rights lawyer Stephen B. Bright (pictured), but “the most pervasive discrimination that is going on is in jury selection.” In a new Discussions With DPIC podcast, Bright — the former President of the Southern Center for Human Rights who has argued jury discrimination cases three times in the U.S. Supreme Court — calls the “rampant” racial…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Intellectual Disability
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Mar 23, 2018
Jury Notes Show Georgia Prosecutors Empaneled White Juries to Try Black Death-Penalty Defendants
New court filings argue that Columbus, Georgia prosecutors had a pattern and practice of systematically striking black prospective jurors because of their race, discriminatorily empanelling all- or nearly-all-white juries to try black defendants on trial for their lives in capital murder…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Nov 17, 2016
Louisiana Supreme Court Orders New Trial for Rodricus Crawford in Controversial Caddo Parish Death Penalty Case
The Louisiana Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of Rodricus Crawford (pictured) and ordered that he be given a new trial in a controversial death penalty case that attracted national attention amid evidence of race discrimination, prosecutorial excess, and actual…
Policy Issues
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,United States Supreme Court
,May 23, 2016
Supreme Court Rules Georgia Prosecutors Struck Death Penalty Jurors Because They Were Black, Grants New Trial
On May 23, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction and death sentence of Timothy Foster (pictured) because Georgia prosecutors improperly exercised their discretionary jury strikes on the basis of race to exclude African American jurors. The vote was 7 – 1, with Justice Thomas the lone dissenter. Foster is now entitled to a new…
Policy Issues
Arbitrariness
,Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Oct 29, 2015
Amid Threatening Comments by Current DA, Death Penalty Dominates Caddo Parish Prosecutor Election
Capital punishment is dominating the discussion in the runoff election between James E. Stewart, Sr. and Dhu Thompson to succeed acting Caddo Parish, Louisiana District Attorney Dale Cox. Cox’s controversial statements about the death penalty — including that the state needs to “kill more people” — have focused national attention on the parish, which ranks among the two percent of U.S. counties responsible for 56 percent of the inmates on death row…
Policy Issues
Arbitrariness
,Race
,Aug 18, 2015
STUDIES: Racial Bias in Jury Selection
A new study of trials in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, revealed that potential jurors who were black were much more likely to be struck from juries than non-blacks. The results were consistent with findings from Alabama, North Carolina, and other parts of Louisiana, highlighting an issue that will be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court this…