Entries tagged with “Timothy Foster”
Issues
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 parole. On March 4, 2022, Foster (pictured) pleaded guilty in a Rome, Georgia courtroom and accepted the life sentence after prosecutors agreed to drop the death penalty in his case. The plea deal ends a 35-year legal odyssey that began in…
Issues
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 discrimination in jury selection “a matter of grave…
Issues
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 cases. In a supplemental motion seeking a new trial for Johnny Gates (pictured) — a black man sentenced to death by an all-white jury in 1977 for the rape and murder of a white woman — lawyers from the Southern…
Issues
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 trial. Foster, who is black, was sentenced to death by an all-white jury after prosecutors used their peremptory challenges to remove every black…