Justices Target Race Bias in Juries

The Supreme Court, overturning the murder convictions of a black man in California and another in Texas by nearly all-white juries, warned judges and prosecutors Monday that they must put an end to racial discrimination in the selection of jurors.

The California ruling is likely to have an immediate effect on the way juries are selected in the state, and will give some other recently convicted criminals a claim to a new trial.

The Constitution’s guarantee of equal treatment under the law requires that race play no role in the forming of juries, the court said. To permit such discrimination “undermines public confidence in the fairness of our system of justice” and is “at war with our basic concepts of a democratic society,” Justice John Paul Stevens said.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the only black member of the high court, voted against the defendants in both cases.

The pair of rulings puts new teeth in earlier decisions that ordered trial judges to watch over the process of selecting a jury. Judges were to make sure that neither prosecutors nor defense lawyers excluded potential jurors because of race.

In the California case, the justices said trial judges must question lawyers whenever there was a hint or “an inference” of racial bias when a potential juror was excluded.

The 8-1 decision overturns a more conservative rule adopted by the California Supreme Court, which called for intervention by a judge only when there was a “strong likelihood” that racial bias was involved.

In the Texas case, the justices voted 6 to 3 to overturn a nearly 20-year-old murder conviction and all but accused Dallas prosecutors of lying about their efforts to exclude African Americans from the jury.

The prosecutors removed 19 of 20 African Americans from the jury pool in 1986 before they tried Thomas Miller-El, who is black, for the robbery and murder of a Holiday Inn worker. He was convicted and sentenced to death. He was days away from execution three years ago when the high court intervened in his case.

Although the Texas ruling resolved an old case, the California decision was likely to have an immediate and ongoing effect on the state’s criminal and civil trials. The justices said they wanted trial judges to move quickly to halt the jury selection process whenever they saw the first sign of racial bias, whatever the race of the defendant.

At issue in both cases was the process by which 12 jurors were selected from a pool of perhaps dozens of citizens. Both the prosecution and defense may reject potential jurors based on a hunch that they would not look favorably on their cases. Such strikes are known as peremptory challenges.

Under California law, the prosecution and defense may each strike as many as 20 potential jurors without explanation. They may do so based on answers to written or oral questions.

Although the two sides may exercise their judgment in removing potential jurors, they may not rely on race as a reason, the high court ruled Monday.

If an inference of race bias is shown, the judge must ask the prosecutor or defense lawyer to explain his or her reasons for seeking to exclude the individual from the jury. If there is a race-neutral reason -- for example, a fact about the person’s job or background -- the judge should uphold the move to exclude the potential juror.

If a prosecutor cannot give a race-neutral explanation, the judge should not permit the juror to be excluded, the court said.

The California state courts had set too high a standard for triggering such questioning by the judge, the high court ruled.

The justices did not define what they meant by an inference of discrimination, but they said it was shown in the case of Jay Johnson, a black defendant in California.

Johnson was charged by prosecutors in Contra Costa County in 1998 with second-degree murder in the death of his girlfriend’s 19-month-old daughter. He maintained that the death was an accident.

There were three African Americans in the jury pool, and the prosecutor rejected all three. The defense lawyer objected in each instance, and the judge refused to query the prosecutor.

Johnson was convicted but appealed, contending that the all-white jury had violated his rights. He won in a state appeals court but lost in a 5-2 ruling by the California Supreme Court in 2003. That court reaffirmed its view that challengers must show a “strong likelihood” of racial bias in order for the judge to intervene.

In another case, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco had ruled the state courts were wrong and had ignored valid claims of racial bias in jury selection.

In his opinion Monday, Stevens said the 9th Circuit was right on the issue and the California Supreme Court was wrong.

“We did not intend ... that a defendant would have to persuade the judge ... that the challenge was more likely than not the product of purposeful discrimination,” Stevens said in Johnson vs. California. “Instead, a defendant [must only] produce evidence sufficient to permit the trial judge to draw an inference that discrimination has occurred.”

It makes more sense to ask first rather than speculate later about the motives of the prosecutor, Stevens added. “A direct answer can be obtained by asking a simple question,” he said.

Monday’s ruling overturns Johnson’s conviction and is likely to lead to a new trial.

The decision also will have a practical effect in trials around the state. It will require judges to question lawyers on their reasons for excluding certain jurors. It could also establish grounds for new trials for defendants with cases on appeal.

“The California courts have turned a blind eye to racial discrimination in jury selection,” said Stephen B. Bedrick, an Oakland lawyer who represented Johnson. “This decision by the U.S. Supreme Court should bring California back into line with the rest of the nation.”

A lawyer for a pro-prosecution group said he feared the ruling would give convicted criminals new grounds for appeals.

“The real impact of this won’t be known for a few years,” said Charles Hobson of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento. “We will have to live with it, and hopefully we will not have many convictions overturned.”

Justice Thomas dissented alone. States should have “wide discretion” in seeking to eliminate racial discrimination, and “California’s procedure falls comfortably within its broad discretion to craft its own rules of criminal procedure,” he wrote.

In the Texas case, lawyers for Miller-El had turned up evidence of deliberate discrimination by the Dallas prosecutors.

“Do not take Jews, Negroes, Dagos, Mexicans or a member of any minority race on a jury, no matter how rich or well educated,” said a 1963 Dallas prosecutors’ manual that the lawyers introduced as evidence, maintaining that such attitudes still prevailed at the time.

The lawyers also cited evidence that prosecutors questioned potential black jurors more aggressively and shuffled the seating of the jury pool in hopes of moving whites to the front. The one black juror accepted was a strong proponent of the death penalty.

Two years ago, the justices sent the case back to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans and told the court to take a hard look at the case. Its judges simply reaffirmed the conviction.

On Monday, the Supreme Court reversed Miller-El’s conviction, saying he deserved a new trial because prosecutors had conspired to keep African Americans off the jury.

Justice David H. Souter said the jury selection process was “infected” by racial bias. He described as “trickery” the prosecutors’ use of different questioning for white and black jurors, and he dismissed the “incredible explanations” for why certain black jurors were excluded.

Moreover, the state court’s refusal to act on the evidence was “unreasonable and erroneous,” he said in Miller-El vs. Dretke.

In dissent, Thomas said the “majority’s speculation” had not convinced him that Dallas prosecutors acted for reasons of racial bias. Prosecutors said they excluded the potential black jurors because they were leery of imposing a death sentence.

“On the basis of facts and law, rather than sentiment, Miller-El does not merit” a new trial, Thomas concluded. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia joined his dissent.