On November 7, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant review to Texas inmate Duane Buck. Buck sought a new sen­tenc­ing tri­al because of tes­ti­mo­ny sug­gest­ing he posed a greater dan­ger to soci­ety because he is black. During his tri­al, psy­chol­o­gist Dr. Walter Quijano told the court that Buck’s race increased the like­li­hood of his future dan­ger­ous­ness. Three of the Justices on the Court (Alito, Scalia and Breyer), which had grant­ed Buck a stay just before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion on September 15, said his case was dif­fer­ent from oth­er sim­i­lar cas­es where relief was grant­ed because it was Buck’s defense attor­ney who was respon­si­ble for elic­it­ing the offen­sive tes­ti­mo­ny. Justices Sotomayor and Kagan dis­sent­ed, stat­ing, ​“Today the court denies review of a death sen­tence marred by racial over­tones.… Buck did not argue that his race made him less dan­ger­ous, and the pros­e­cu­tor had no need to revis­it the issue. But she did, in a ques­tion specif­i­cal­ly designed to per­suade the jury that Buck’s race made him more dan­ger­ous and that, in part on this basis, he should be sen­tenced to death.” (See more on this case below.)

On the same day, the Supreme Court rein­stat­ed the death sen­tence of Archie Dixon in Ohio. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit over­turned Dixon’s con­vic­tion after find­ing that his con­fes­sion to a mur­der was invalid due to police coer­cion. The Court grant­ed cer­tio­rari and reversed this deci­sion, not­ing that fed­er­al courts must give great def­er­ence to state court find­ings, and writ­ing in an unsigned opin­ion that ​“there is no evi­dence that any of Dixon’s state­ments was the prod­uct of actu­al coer­cion.” (Bobby v. Dixon, No.10 – 1540).

(A. de Vogue, ​“Supreme Court Denies Appeal on Race Tainted Death Penalty Case,” ABC News, November 7, 2011; Buck v. Thaler, No.11 – 6391 (Sotomayor, J., dis­sent­ing from denial of cert.); Supreme Court rein­states death sen­tence in Ohio ​‘buried alive’ mur­der case,” CBS News, November 8, 2011). See U.S. Supreme Court and Race. See also pre­vi­ous DPIC note on Buck.

Duane Buck case: Prominent indi­vid­u­als from Texas have peti­tioned Harris County District Attorney Patricia Lykos on behalf of Duane Buck, ask­ing her to rem­e­dy what the Supreme Court declined to review. Their let­ter read, ​“We write to you today, as elect­ed offi­cials, civ­il rights lead­ers, faith lead­ers, legal pro­fes­sion­als, past ABA pres­i­dents, a for­mer gov­er­nor, and con­cerned cit­i­zens ded­i­cat­ed to pro­tect­ing the integri­ty of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, to request that you refrain from seek­ing an exe­cu­tion date in Duane Buck’s case until the par­ties and courts have been giv­en ade­quate oppor­tu­ni­ty and time to address the trou­bling issues in Mr. Buck’s case. We believe that no one should be exe­cut­ed whose death sen­tence was based on racially-biased evidence.”

(Press release, Attorneys for Duane Buck, ​“More than 60 Civil Rights and Faith Leaders, Elected Officials, Former Prosecutors, and Past ABA Presidents Call On Harris County D.A. To Provide Remedy in Case of Duane Buck,” November 7, 2011).

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