On Tuesday, Dec. 4, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear argu­ments in Snyder v. Louisiana, a case involv­ing a black defen­dant sen­tenced to death by an all-white jury after the pros­e­cu­tion used its peremp­to­ry strikes to exclude all of the qual­i­fied black jurors. During Allen Snyder’s 1996 tri­al for the mur­der of a man his estranged wife was dat­ing, pros­e­cu­tor James Williams of Jefferson Parish urged the all-white jury to sen­tence the defen­dant to death so that Snyder would not ​“get away with it” like O.J. Simpson. Simpson was acquit­ted of a high­ly pub­li­cized dou­ble homi­cide less than a year before. The defense chal­lenged the selec­tion of the jury as a vio­la­tion of equal pro­tec­tion, but Snyder’s con­vic­tion was upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court.

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the con­vic­tion of Texas death row inmate Thomas Miller-El because of the pros­e­cu­tion’s racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry jury strikes. The Court not only looked at the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the rea­sons the pros­e­cu­tor gave for elim­i­nat­ing indi­vid­ual black jurors, but also drew infer­ences from the cumu­la­tive effect of the pros­e­cu­tor’s actions through­out the process. When Snyder’s case first came before the Supreme Court, it was remand­ed back to Louisiana in light of the Miller-El rul­ing.

Before the tri­al, the pros­e­cu­tor had made pub­lic ref­er­ences com­par­ing Snyder’s case to O.J. Simpson’s, but he promised the tri­al judge that he would not make such ref­er­ences before the jury. This same pros­e­cu­tor report­ed­ly dis­played on his desk a toy elec­tric chair with pic­tures of the faces of the five black men he had sent to death row past­ed to it. Two of the peo­ple Williams sent to death row were exon­er­at­ed after it was dis­cov­ered that pros­e­cu­tors had failed to dis­close excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence. Jefferson Parish was known for hav­ing sup­port­ed white suprema­cist David Duke in var­i­ous elec­tions.
(Posted November 30, 2007). Read the Petitioner’s and State’s briefs here. Amicus briefs have also been filed in sup­port of Snyder by the Constitution Project and Religious Ministers of Jefferson Parish. 

See also U.S. Supreme Court and Race.

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