by Texas Coalition to Abolish Death Penalty
Feb. 15, 2002 - The U.S. Supreme Court Friday agreed to review the conviction and sentencing of a Texas death row inmate whose execution had been scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 21.
Miller-El was convicted for the 1985 murder of Douglas Walker in Irving, Texas. During the period in which Miller-El's trial took place, Dallas County prosecutors were engaging in racist jury selection tactics in an effort to exclude minority jurors - tactics which were exposed by both local and national media.
"Thomas' claim that his trial violated the Sixth Amendment right to a jury of one's peers has never been fully considered by an appellate court," said Steven W. Hawkins, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "Finally, after all these years, he will receive the review that he has long deserved."
During the early 1980s, the Dallas County district attorney's office provided newly hired prosecutors with a memo entitled "Jury Selection in a Criminal Case." The manual explicitly advised Dallas County prosecutors to remove all minorities from juries with premptory challenges because they "empathize with the defendant."
A study of the 15 death penalty trials held between 1980 and 1986 revealed that, of the 62 African American jurors found qualified after individual voir dire, the state struck 56 - or 90 percent of them - a strike rate far in excess of the rate at which white and Hispanic jurors were struck.
Moreover, of the 15 capital murder defendants, five were African American, including Miller-El. Four of the defendants were tried before all-white juries; Miller-El's jury included one African American who described his views on the death penalty this way: "It's too quick. They don't feel the pain... Pour some honey on them and stake them out over an ant bed... That's what I call punishment."
Rick Halperin, president of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said the issue of bias during jury selection has not been adequately addressed in states such as Texas that fall under the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
"The state continues to insist that Thomas Miller-El received a fair trial and that jury selection was not tainted by racial bias," Halperin said.
"We look forward to a full explanation from the Dallas County district attorney's office as to how striking 90 percent of qualified African American jurors does not constitute racial bias when this strike rate is much higher than it is for white and Latino jurors. The pernicious stain of racism permeates the death penalty system, both across the nation and particularly in Texas."
Halperin added, "It is an outdated, repugnant and totally unacceptable idea and practice that skin color should play a determinative role in jury selection in this country. The Dallas County district attorney's office should be reminded in the strongest terms possible that we are no longer living in the 1870s."
[posted 3/15/02]
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