WASHINGTON — When the Supreme Court threw out the conviction of a black inmate on death row in Mississippi four years ago over claims that prosecutors illegally barred blacks from jury duty, he was praised for sending a message to lower courts to be aware of racial bias in the criminal justice system.
But in a little-noticed move on the same day that blocked President Joe Biden’s student loan debt relief plan, the court last week declined to take up a similar case brought by another black Mississippi death row inmate.
The decision led the three liberal justices to complain that the conservative majority was going back on what it said in the 2019 ruling.
“Because this court refuses to intervene, a black man will be executed in the state of Mississippi based on the decision of a jury that was plausibly selected on the basis of race,” Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion to which Judges Elena Kagan joined. and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The last appeal was filed by tony clarkwho was convicted of murdering 13-year-old Muhammed Saeed during a botched convenience store robbery in Canton, Mississippi, in October 2014.
During the jury selection process, in which prosecutors and defense attorneys can try to block potential jurors without giving a reason, Clark says prosecutors illegally targeted black jurors in violation of a court ruling. Supreme Court of 1986 that said that people cannot be excluded because of their race. .
Clark’s lawyers cited the 2019 court ruling in which the justices, split 7-2, threw out the conviction of Curtis Flowers due to evidence that the prosecutor illegally blocked potential black jurors. Flowers’ case had garnered a great deal of media attention, in part because he appeared on “In the Dark,” a critically acclaimed podcast.
At the time of the ruling, civil rights attorney Kristen Clarke, who now heads the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said it would “sound an alarm bell” for prosecutors who focus on race in the selection process. jury.
But in its latest decision, the Supreme Court effectively told the Mississippi Supreme Court that it could ignore what the Flowers ruling had concluded, Sotomayor said.
The Mississippi court decision in May 2022 upholding Clark’s conviction “was a direct repudiation” of the Supreme Court’s Flowers ruling, he added.
“This can only be read as a signal from the Mississippi Supreme Court that it intends to carry on with business as usual, no matter what this court in Flowers says,” Sotomayor wrote.
Alison Steiner, the attorney representing Clark, said her client “lost what every citizen is entitled to: a finding of guilt and a sentence that is not tainted by racial bias.”
In Clark’s case, there were eight black people out of 38 on the jury. Prosecutors blocked seven of them, Clark’s attorney said in court documents.
The eventual jury of 12 was made up of 11 white people and one black person.
Robert Dunham, a lawyer who specializes in the death penalty, said the statistical evidence of racial profiling in the case was “extremely strong” but was not addressed by the state court.
“He [Supreme] The court’s refusal to intervene, especially after having overturned the same state court for the same violations, shows a willful indifference to discrimination in order to achieve a results-oriented outcome.”
Clark, 43, he was found guilty of murder and related charges and sentenced to death. He argued on appeal that the state’s actions violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch defended the process in court documents, saying the jurors were thrown out because they opposed or expressed reluctance to impose the death penalty. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the liberal Supreme Court justices’ criticism of the case.
