Newswise — The Supreme Court ruling in Foster v. Chatman is an important one, said a legal expert in death penalty cases. The justices ruled in favor of Georgia death-row inmate Timothy Tyrone Foster, finding that the prosecution unlawfully excluded black potential jurors and selected an all-white jury that convicted him of killing a white woman in 1987.
The 7-1 ruling reaffirms the importance of the rules laid out to prevent racial discrimination in jury selection in the landmark case, Batson v. Kentucky, said Jessica Gabel Cino, associate dean for academic affairs and professor of law at Georgia State University College of Law. In Batson, the Court held that the state violated an African-American defendant’s equal protection rights when the prosecution purposefully excluded members of his race from the jury.
Cino examines the Foster ruling:
The good: “This is a promising one-two punch that helps in post-conviction relief. First, the opinion notes that the Supreme Court had jurisdiction to hear despite at attempt by Georgia to argue procedural bars under state law. Second, the opinion addresses the merits of the discrimination present in this case.”
The bad: “Does [Samuel] Alito’s concurrence hint that you basically have to have a slam dunk in order to make a valid Batson challenge? If so, this case sets the bar really high.”
The (perhaps) predictable: “I thought that if ever there was a case that cried out for a unanimous opinion from the Supreme Court, this was the one. The racial bias in the peremptory challenges was about as close as you can come to being blatant and unmistakable. There was written proof! But Doubting [Clarence] Thomas was again on the dissent. While his dissent was predicated on jurisdictional grounds, he seems to have adopted Scalia’s bite when referring to the majority: ‘In few other circumstances could I imagine the Court spilling so much ink over a factbound claim arising from a state post-conviction proceeding.’”
Cino has written on a wide-range of topics, including trial and jury tactics, the validity of forensic evidence genetic testing, forensic DNA identification, bankruptcy fraud, lender liability, legal ethics and bioethics. Cino also consults on various criminal and bankruptcy matters and has engaged in numerous pro bono criminal defense representations. Read her article which discusses this case at http://law.gsu.edu/2015/07/22/impartial-jury.
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