Racial Discrimination Results in New Trial for Philadelphia Death Row Inmate

Dec. 20, 2001 - A Pennsylvania judge overturned the conviction of William Basemore, saying the prosecutor engaged in a pattern of racial discrimination during jury selection.  The prosecutor eliminated 19 potential jurors, all of whom were black.  The judge found that there was "a conscious strategy to exclude" black jurors.  The same prosecutor, Jack McMahon, had been videotaped in the 1980s instructing a group of young prosecutors on how to exclude certain types of black jurors from trials.