Entries tagged with “Batson v. Kentucky”
Mar 28, 2025
“He Looks a Little Like the Defendant”: A Closer Look at the History of Racial Bias in Jury Selection
As closing arguments of his trial began in Johnston County, North Carolina, Hasson Bacote watched as Assistant District Attorney Gregory Butler urged the jury to sentence him to death. Mr. Bacote, a Black man, had been convicted of fatally shooting 18-year-old Anthony Surles during a robbery when Mr. Bacote was just 21 years old. Mr. Bacote admitted he had fired a single shot out of a trailer, but said he did not know that he hit anyone.“Hasson Bacote is a thug: cold-blooded…
Issues
May 28, 2024
Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals Categorically Bars Review of Racial Bias in Capital Jury Selection
Madison County,…
Issues
Apr 30, 2024
Discussions with DPIC Podcast: Professor Elisabeth Semel on the Implications of Batson v. Kentucky and California’s Capital Punishment System
In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Elisabeth Semel, Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley (pictured). Professor Semel joined Berkeley Law in 2001 as the first director of the school’s death penalty clinic and remains the clinic’s co-director, where students have represented individuals facing capital punishment and written amicus briefs in death penalty cases before the United…
Issues
Apr 30, 2024
Professor Elisabeth Semel on the Implications of Batson v. Kentucky and California’s Capital Punishment System
In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Elisabeth Semel, Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Semel joined Berkeley Law in 2001 as the first director of the school’s death penalty clinic and remains the clinic’s co-director, where students have represented individuals facing capital punishment and written amicus briefs in death penalty cases before the United States…
Issues
Mar 28, 2024
OP-ED: Black Woman Denied Opportunity to Serve as a Juror in Georgia Capital Trial Cites Concerns About Racial Bias
In a March 26, 2024, op-ed published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Patricia McTier, a Georgia nurse, recounts her experience being removed from a jury pool in 1998 for what she calls a“questionable reason” related to her race. Born and raised in Appling County, Georgia, Ms. McTier grew up in the Jim Crow era and writes that she“enter[ed] adulthood during a time of great social change,” where she grew to“cherish our American system of justice and the…
Issues
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…