The US Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of a black inmate on death row in Mississippi, citing a prosecutor’s exclusion of black jurors.
The justices ruled that prosecutors in the trials of Curtis Flowers unconstitutionally removed African-American jurors from selection.
Flowers, 49, has been tried six times for the 1996 murders of four furniture store workers in Winona, Mississippi.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented in the 7-2 vote.
Flowers’ case ended with a mistrial twice. In three trials, Flowers was convicted, but the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned the decision due to “numerous instances of prosecutorial misconduct”, including discriminating against black jurors.
In this sixth trial prosecutors disallowed five of six black jurors. Flowers argued that prosecutors were again discriminating on basis of race.
But the Mississippi Supreme Court allowed the conviction to stand – a ruling the Supreme Court has now reversed.
What did the Supreme Court decision say?
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion.
In addition to challenging most potential black jurors, “the State engaged in dramatically disparate questioning of black and white prospective jurors”, Justice Kavanaugh wrote.
In the sixth trial, prosecutors used five of six peremptory strikes against potential black jurors, so that only one African-American sat on the panel.
One black juror eliminated by prosecutors, Carolyn Wright, was “similarly situated to white prospective jurors who were not struck by the State”, said the majority ruling.
“All of the relevant facts and circumstances taken together establish that the trial court committed clear error in concluding that the State’s peremptory strike of black prospective juror Carolyn Wright was not ‘motivated in substantial part by discriminatory intent’,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Samuel Alito said the case was far from ordinary and as such, the jury selection process could not be analysed as if it were a typical proceeding.
“In light of all that had gone before, it was risky for the case to be tried once again by the same prosecutor in Montgomery County.”
What did the dissenting justices say?
But Justice Clarence Thomas, who penned the dissent, accused his fellow justices of prolonging the “nightmare” of the victims’ families.
He said that “any competent prosecutor would have exercised the same strikes as the State did in this trial”.
“The Court today does not dispute that the evidence was sufficient to convict Flowers or that he was tried by an impartial jury,” Justice Thomas wrote.
“Instead, the Court vacates Flowers’ convictions on the ground that the state courts clearly erred in finding that the State did not discriminate based on race when it struck Carolyn Wright from the jury.”
“The only clear errors in this case are committed by today’s majority… the Court almost entirely ignores – and certainly does not refute – the race-neutral reasons given by the State for striking Wright and four other black prospective jurors.”
