Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Should a juror be allowed to sit in a death penalty case where he said: Non-white races were statistically more violent than the white race.

Apparently yes, in Texas. 

The Supreme Court denied cert yesterday, but Justice Sotomayor dissented (joined by Kagan and Breyer) and said:

Racial bias is “odious in all aspects,” but “especially pernicious in the administration of justice.” Buck v. Davis, 580 U. S. ___, ___ (2017) (slip op., at 22) (internal quotation marks omitted). When racial bias infects a jury in a capital case, it deprives a defendant of his right to an impartial tribunal in a life-or-death context, and it “‘poisons public confidence’ in the judicial process.” Ibid. The seating of a racially biased juror, therefore, can never be harmless. As with other forms of disqualifying bias, if even one racially biased juror is empaneled and the death penalty is imposed,“the State is disentitled to execute the sentence,” Morgan v. Illinois, 504 U. S. 719, 729 (1992).
In this case, petitioner Kristopher Love, a Black man,claims that one of the jurors in his capital trial was racially biased because the juror asserted during jury selection that “[n]on-white” races were statistically more violent than the white race. 29 Record 145. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals never considered Love’s claim on the merits. Instead, relying on an inapposite state-law rule, the court concluded that any error was harmless because Love had been provided with two extra peremptory strikes earlier in the jury selection proceeding, which he had used before the juror at issue was questioned. That decision was plainly erroneous. An already-expended peremptory strike is no cure for the seating of an allegedly biased juror. The state court thus deprived Love of any meaningful review of his federal constitutional claim. I would summarily vacate the judgment below and remand for proper consideration.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So uttering a verifiable fact is cause for removal? If i am a juror where a black man is on trial for murdering another black man and I state that black men are more likely to kill other black men than white men, am i off for cause? Or better yet, what about one of the tobacco cases and I state that science proves that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. Am I excused?

Anonymous said...

It's an obviously true statement so of course it's not a cause challenge. Was this supposed to be a tough call??

Anonymous said...

Take an implicit bias course, will ya!!