softheart
03-03-2003, 11:58 AM
March 3
TEXAS:
High court ruling slaps Texas justice
The U.S. Supreme Court has sent a strong message to the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals that courts must allow state prisoners to appeal
convictions based on constitutional protections, including racial bias.
The decision will have an enormous effect in Texas, where appeals courts
have routinely ignored strong evidence of racial bias in the selection of
nearly all-white juries.
As of now, 184 people on death row in Texas are African American, 41 % of
the total population awaiting execution.In its decision last week, which
involved a 1986 capital murder case in Dallas, the Supreme Court
overruled the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on a solid 8-1 vote.
Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.
In the opinion written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Supreme Court
criticized the Texas court for ignoring the obvious racial bias in the
selection of the jury that found Thomas Miller-El, a black man, guilty of
killing a Dallas hotel clerk during a robbery.
When selecting a jury in the case, prosecutors not only barred most
prospective black jurors from the panel, but subjected the blacks who
weren't removed to more extensive questions on their views of the death
penalty than they did white members of the panel. One black member was
allowed to sit on the jury, but only after he said he believed Texas was
too lenient in the application of the death penalty.
There is no excuse for this kind of racial bias in the American system of
justice. In this decision, the Supreme Court said that for an inmate to
get a new hearing, his or her lawyers only need to present a plausible
case, not necessarily a winning one, that their constitutional
protections were denied.
This means that the appeals court in Texas must be much more open to
constitutional challenges than it has been in the past. Every person
accused of a crime in Texas deserves a trial free of racial bias.
It took the U.S. Supreme Court to remind Texas courts of that
constitutional imperative.
(source: Editorial, San Antonio Express-News)
softie
TEXAS:
High court ruling slaps Texas justice
The U.S. Supreme Court has sent a strong message to the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals that courts must allow state prisoners to appeal
convictions based on constitutional protections, including racial bias.
The decision will have an enormous effect in Texas, where appeals courts
have routinely ignored strong evidence of racial bias in the selection of
nearly all-white juries.
As of now, 184 people on death row in Texas are African American, 41 % of
the total population awaiting execution.In its decision last week, which
involved a 1986 capital murder case in Dallas, the Supreme Court
overruled the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on a solid 8-1 vote.
Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.
In the opinion written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Supreme Court
criticized the Texas court for ignoring the obvious racial bias in the
selection of the jury that found Thomas Miller-El, a black man, guilty of
killing a Dallas hotel clerk during a robbery.
When selecting a jury in the case, prosecutors not only barred most
prospective black jurors from the panel, but subjected the blacks who
weren't removed to more extensive questions on their views of the death
penalty than they did white members of the panel. One black member was
allowed to sit on the jury, but only after he said he believed Texas was
too lenient in the application of the death penalty.
There is no excuse for this kind of racial bias in the American system of
justice. In this decision, the Supreme Court said that for an inmate to
get a new hearing, his or her lawyers only need to present a plausible
case, not necessarily a winning one, that their constitutional
protections were denied.
This means that the appeals court in Texas must be much more open to
constitutional challenges than it has been in the past. Every person
accused of a crime in Texas deserves a trial free of racial bias.
It took the U.S. Supreme Court to remind Texas courts of that
constitutional imperative.
(source: Editorial, San Antonio Express-News)
softie