Death sentence conviction rejected

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court yesterday overturned the murder conviction of a black man sentenced to die by a nearly all-white jury, signalling that lower courts must give greater weight to claims of racial bias when prosecutors use challenges to keep minorities from serving on juries.

By a 6-to-3 vote, the court ordered a new trial for Thomas Miller-El, who had been sentenced to die for his role in the 1985 murder of a white motel clerk during a robbery. The court said there was clear evidence that Dallas prosecutors engaged in racial discrimination during the jury selection process, when they used challenges to keep 10 of 11 qualified blacks off the panel.

''It blinks reality to deny that the State struck [two of the prospective jurors] because they were black," wrote Justice David Souter for the majority. ''The state court's conclusion was unreasonable as well as erroneous."

Souter also cited a 1968 training manual for the Dallas prosecutors' office that explained in detail how to keep minorities off jury panels, evidence that prosecutors had ''shuffled" jury pools to move blacks to the back of the line and questioned whites and blacks differently about their views on the death penalty and crime. The manual was used until at least 1976.

Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, a specialist in racial and criminal issues, said it was a victory for the rights of black defendants and for the rights of black citizens to participate in jury trials. ''I think the court is saying that we will not tolerate two brands of justice -- one for Texas and one for the rest of the country," he said.

During jury selection, prosecutors and defense attorneys are allowed to ''strike" a certain number of prospective jurors. In 1986, however, the Supreme Court ruled that a potential juror could not be challenged because of race. Courts, however, have rejected appeals based on a claim of jury selection bias when prosecutors could offer some other justification, such as body language or having a relative in jail. Yesterday's decision means courts may take a tougher line in examining whether those race-neutral justifications are just a pretext, legal specialists said.

David Cole, a Georgetown law professor, said the ruling was ''very significant and should send a message to lower courts to take jury discrimination claims much more seriously. . . . The court's standard has been relatively toothless to date because it has been so easy for prosecutors to come up with an after-the-fact race-neutral justification for striking black jury members."

Bill Stuntz, a Harvard law professor, questioned whether that message would get through. He criticized the way Souter wrote the opinion, saying it was not generalized enough to provide clear guidance.

''The next time some district judge or state judge confronts a case with these kinds of numbers, if the prosecutor is a little smoother, they may say 'this doesn't look like Miller-El,' " Stuntz said.

Lower Texas and federal courts, including the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, had consistently sided with Dallas prosecutors, even after the Supreme Court backed Miller-El in 2003 in an earlier phase of the case.

Bill Hill, the district attorney of Dallas County, issued a statement saying Miller-El's guilt ''is not in dispute," that the jury selection took place nearly two decades ago and that his office had been supported by lower courts.

Joining Souter in the majority were Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, joined by Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

Thomas argued that much of the evidence cited by the majority, including jury questionnaires and juror cards, was not first presented in state courts. Under a 1996 law intended to speed up the death penalty appeals process, he argued, convicts should not be allowed to raise new arguments during a federal appeal.