SCOTUS Overturns Death Row Conviction In Case of Racial Bias
<...> The decision was 7-2, and was delivered by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who said black and white potential jurors are not treated equally by prosecutors. "The State's relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals strongly suggests that the state wanted to try Flowers before a jury with as few black jurors as possible, and ideally before an all-white jury," Kavanaugh wrote.
Curtis Flowers, who is African-American, was tried five times for the 1996 murder of four people inside a furniture store in Winona, Mississippi. But it was only in 2010, after his sixth trial, that a conviction stuck and Flowers was sentenced to death.
Flowers had wanted his conviction overturned. His lawyers asked the justices to hold that the prosecutor, Doug Evans, who brought each case, broke the law by engaging in race discrimination during jury selection.
Kavanaugh wrote that in criminal cases involving black defendants that "the both-sides-can-do-it argument overlooks the percentage of the United States population that is black (about 12 percent) and the cold reality of jury selection in most jurisdictions."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/21/politics/mississippi-death-row-inmate-decision/
He's been on death row for 22 years now and the podcast In the Dark dedicated season two to his case, uncovering a slew of evidence that helped result in the SCOTUS case. It's a fascinating story, and the link to the podcast is here:
https://www.apmreports.org/in-the-dark
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