The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit has reject­ed an appeal filed on behalf of North Carolina death row inmate Kenneth Rouse. Without dis­put­ing the mer­its of his claim, the court ruled that it would not hear the case because the motion was filed one day after an appeal dead­line estab­lished by a 1996 fed­er­al law. In its rul­ing, the court wrote that the fact that Rouse faces the death penal­ty is no rea­son to give lee­way in meet­ing the fed­er­al dead­line. Rouse’s attor­neys are request­ing a new tri­al because a juror in Rouse’s case failed to dis­close that his own moth­er had been mur­dered and sex­u­al­ly assault­ed. The attor­neys note that the juror, who is white, also used a racial epi­thet to describe Rouse, who is black, and that the juror expressed racist atti­tudes. (The Herald Sun, August 11, 2003). The dis­sent in the case not­ed that the juror care­ful­ly craft­ed his respons­es to voir dire ques­tions because he want­ed to be on the jury that judged Rouse. See Race.

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