Today the Supreme Court ruled that a black man convicted of murder must get a new trial because the jury that tried him was all white and the court had intentionally excluded black citizens from the jury. It is against the law to remove jurors without cause if those removals have a racial pattern according to a 1986 Supreme Court case. However a year later, Timothy Foster was sentenced to death and has been on death row ever since. Now he will get a new trial with a new jury that might decide differently.
This Supreme Court decision is similar to the decisions made in the 1960s which helped make racial segregation illegal.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/23/479166026/supreme-court-orders-new-trial-for-black-death-row-inmate-convicted-by-all-white
No comments:
Post a Comment