The Supreme Court ruled today that Timothy Foster, a black man, sentenced to death row in 1987 by an all-white jury, deserves a re-trial. Justices say prosecutors in the trial abused their so-called peremptory challenges, the limited number of potential jurors who lawyers may dismiss from jury duty without stating a reason. According to a landmark ruling from 1986, the state may not use peremptory strikes to exclude potential jurors based on race. Yet prosecutors selecting the jury for Foster — who confessed to and was convicted of killing an elderly white woman — dismissed all of the black prospective jurors. In 2006, one of Foster’s attorneys obtained the prosecution’s notes, which showedthey highlighted the black prospective jurors’ names, marked them with a “B,” and ranked them, in case “it comes down to having to pick one of the black jurors.”
[For more of this story, written by Francie Diep, go to https://psmag.com/the-data-tha...479eef974#.v90a6qnqv]
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