U.S. Supreme Court Orders Reconsideration of Three Cases in Light of Jury Selection Decision

The U.S. Supreme Court granted writs of certiorari in three jury discrimination cases on June 20, vacating each of them and directing state courts in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana to reconsider the issue in light of the Court’s recent decision in Foster v. Chatman. Two of the petitioners, Curtis Flowers of Mississippi and Christopher Floyd of Alabama, are currently on death row. The third, Jabari Williams, was convicted in Louisiana of second-degree murder. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court granted Timothy Foster a new trial because prosecutors illegally excluded blacks from his jury. Flowers, Floyd, and Williams all raised issues of racial discrimination in jury selection that were rebuffed in the state courts. As in Foster’s case, the prosecutor’s notes in Floyd reflect race-conscious jury strikes. Floyd’s prosecutor marked African American potential jurors with a “B” on its list of jurors to remove, then struck 10 of 11 black prospective jurors. Flowers has been tried six times. His first two convictions were overturned because of prosecutorial misconduct, and his third as a result of racial bias in jury selection. His fourth trial ended in a mistrial and his fifth trial resulted in a hung jury. At his most recent trial, eleven white jurors and one black juror convicted him after just 30 minutes of deliberation. The Equal Justice Initiative, which represents Floyd, released a statement saying, “Racial bias has been a longstanding problem in Alabama, where more than two dozen cases have been reversed after courts found that prosecutors engaged in intentional racial discrimination during jury selection.” EJI Executive Director, Bryan Stevenson, said racial bias in jury selection “undermines the integrity of the criminal justice system.” He told the Montgomery Advertiser, “What we’ve found is regardless of the race of the defendant, a lot of prosecutors appear not to trust black people in juries, which is illegal and unconstitutional.”

(Flowers v. Mississippi, No. 14-10486, June 20, 2016; B. Lyman, “U.S. Supreme Court orders review of Alabama murder case,” Montgomery Advertiser, June 20, 2016; “U.S. SUPREME COURT REVERSES ANOTHER ALABAMA DEATH PENALTY CASE,” Equal Justice Initiative, June 20, 2016; P. Alexander, “For Curtis Flowers, Mississippi Is Still Burning,” Rolling Stone, August 7, 2013.) See Race and U.S. Supreme Court.