Verdict Upset--Indicting Jury Was All White

The Supreme Court today strongly reaffirmed a century-old rule that convicted criminals must be retried if members of their own race were excluded from the grand jury that indicted them.

By a 6-3 vote, the justices ordered a new trial for a California black man, Booker T. Hillery, whose 1962 conviction in Kings County was thrown out because blacks were barred from serving on grand juries there at the time.

Justice Thurgood Marshall, writing for the court, said the exclusion of black grand jurors tainted the conviction, even though Hillery received a fair trial and it may be difficult for the state to retry him now on 24-year-old charges.

“Intentional discrimination in the selection of grand jurors is a grave constitutional trespass . . . wholly within the power of the state to prevent,” Marshall said. “Thus, the remedy we have embraced for over a century (throwing out the conviction) is not disproportionate to the evil that it seeks to deter.”

He added, “If grand jury discrimination becomes a thing of the past, no conviction will ever again be lost on account of it.”

Hillery was convicted of killing Marlene Miller, 15, who was sexually assaulted and stabbed in the chest with her sewing scissors. Her body was found in March, 1962, near her home in Hanford, Calif.