U.S. Supreme Court declines to take case of Black man convicted of killing wife and children by all-White jury
The vote was 6-3, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor and liberal colleagues Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting from the court’s order.
Andre Lee Thomas was convicted to death by an all-White jury, including 3 jurors who expressed opposition to interracial marriage on their jury questionnaires. Thomas’ counsel at the time raised no objection about the 3 jurors.
Thomas, suffering from severe schizophrenia, murdered his wife, Laura Christine Boren, and the children before attempting to take his own life in 2004. Days later, in his jail cell, Thomas gouged out his right eye.
“Thomas’ case undermines principles this Court has repeatedly and forcefully protected: the right to an impartial jury, and the recognition that overt racial bias in the criminal justice system must be eradicated,” Sherrilyn Ifill, a lawyer for Thomas, argued in court papers.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton urged the court not to step in, noting in court papers that Thomas’ counsel had “questioned one of the jurors at issue about racial bias extensively in voir dire” and that “the trial court ensured that the other 2 could render an impartial verdict in view of the evidence, and the record shows other reasons why defense counsel might have wanted these jurors to serve on the jury.”
Texas also claimed that Thomas’ trial counsel was “experienced” and made “strategic decisions” concerning the extent they questioned the jurors at issue about their views on interracial marriage. The state says the defense used its preemptory strikes on jurors who “in their view” would have been much worse than those seated.
Source: CNN, Staff, October 12, 2022
Supreme Court Turns Away Death Penalty Case on Racial Animus in Jury
The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from a death row inmate in Texas. The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear an appeal from a Black death row inmate in Texas who was convicted by an all-white jury that included jurors who had expressed opposition to interracial marriage.
As is its custom, the court gave no reasons for turning down the appeal. The court’s three liberal members dissented, saying that the jurors’ racial prejudice deprived the inmate, Andre Lee Thomas, of a fair trial.
Mr. Thomas was convicted of murdering his wife, who was white, their son and his wife’s daughter from an earlier relationship. Prosecutors agreed that he was psychotic at the time, though they said he had voluntarily induced the psychosis by drinking cough medicine.
Mr. Thomas tried to remove his victim’s hearts to, he said, “set them free from evil.” While awaiting trial, he removed one of his eyes. Years later, he removed the other one.
Prospective jurors were asked their views of interracial marriage and procreation on a multiple-choice form, and several of them said they disapproved.
One prospective juror indicated that he was vigorously opposed and that he was “not afraid to say so.” He added: “I don’t believe God intended for this.”
Two other prospective jurors indicated that they opposed people of different races marrying or having children but that they tried to keep their feelings to themselves. One said: “I think we should stay with our blood line.”
Mr. Thomas’s lawyers did not use peremptory challenges to strike the jurors, and they did not ask the judge to remove them for cause. All three jurors were seated.
During the penalty phase of the trial, a prosecutor asked the jury to consider the danger Mr. Thomas might pose if he were not executed. “Are you going to take the risk about him asking your daughter out or your granddaughter out?” the prosecutor asked the jury.
In an unusual and impassioned 14-page dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote that Mr. Thomas had not received the effective assistance of counsel guaranteed by the Constitution.
“Thomas’s offense involved not only interracial violence, but also interracial intimacy,” she wrote. “Historians have long recognized that interracial marriage, sex and procreation evoke some of the most invidious forms of prejudice and violence.”
Justice Sotomayor quoted from the work of the sociologist Gunnar Myrdal: “No other way of crossing the color line is so attended by the emotion commonly associated with violating a social taboo as intermarriage and extramarital relations between a Negro man and a white woman.”
Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in the case, Thomas v. Lumpkin, No. 21-444.
“By failing to challenge, or even question, jurors who were hostile to interracial marriage in a capital case involving that explosive topic, Thomas’s counsel performed well below an objective standard of reasonableness,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. “This deficient performance prejudiced Thomas by depriving him of a fair trial.”
The courts had also failed, she wrote.
“It is ultimately the duty of the courts ‘to confront racial animus in the justice system,’” she wrote, quoting an earlier decision. “That responsibility requires courts, including this one, vigilantly to safeguard the fairness of criminal trials by ensuring that jurors do not harbor, or at the very least could put aside, racially biased sentiments.”
Source: nytimes.com, Adam Liptak, October 11, 2022
Sotomayor Leads Dissent as SCOTUS Refuses to Take Up Death Penalty Case
The right-wing majority of the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday voted not to take up the case of Andre Thomas, a death row inmate in Texas, despite evidence that the jury that convicted him of murder in 2005 included jurors who were racist.
The vote was 6-3, with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.
"Thomas' case undermines principles this court has repeatedly and forcefully protected: the right to an impartial jury, and the recognition that overt racial bias in the criminal justice system must be eradicated."
Thomas, who is Black and was diagnosed as having schizophrenia after his arrest, was convicted of murdering his wife, their son, and his wife's daughter in 2004. Thomas' wife was white and their child was biracial.
Three of the jurors expressed disapproval of interracial marriage before they were named members of the all-white jury, which Thomas' attorney, Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said in court filings violated the defendant's right to an impartial jury of his peers.
"Thomas' case undermines principles this court has repeatedly and forcefully protected: the right to an impartial jury, and the recognition that overt racial bias in the criminal justice system must be eradicated," Ifill said in a court filing.
One of the jurors said in a questionnaire that they believed interracial marriage is "harmful for the children involved because they do not have a specific race to belong to," while another said people should "stay with [their] Blood Line."
As Slate journalist Mark Joseph Stern wrote on social media, state prosecutors at times appeared to be seeking out jurors with racist views.
The lawyers representing Thomas in the original case did not object to the 3 jurors.
Ifill called Tuesday's ruling "very disappointing."
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, argued in court filings that all the jurors had been questioned about racial bias and claimed it had been determined that the jury could render an unbiased verdict.
In her dissenting opinion on Tuesday, Sotomayor said Thomas' "conviction and death sentence clearly violate the constitutional right to the effective assistance of counsel."
"No jury deciding whether to recommend a death sentence should be tainted by potential racial biases that could infect its deliberations or decision, particularly where the case involved an interracial crime," said Sotomayor.
"The errors in this case render Thomas' death sentence not only unreliable, but unconstitutional," the justice added. "I would not permit the state to execute Andre Thomas in light of the ineffective assistance that he received."
Source: commondreams.org, Staff, October 12, 2022
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde