Urgent Appeal

  On Wednesday, October 16th, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Thomas Miller-El,  a black Texas death row inmate who claims that Dallas County prosecutors engaged in a racially biased jury selection process at the time of his trial in 1986.  

Miller-El v. Cockrell will require the Court to clarify the rules for demonstrating racial discrimination in jury selection and to determine what evidence a lower court should consider when reviewing such a claim.

     Miller-El asserts that Dallas County prosecutors systematically excluded African-American jurors during his trial. Ten of the 11 potential black jurors were eliminated by the prosecution. In their final analysis, the lower courts discounted evidence that, until at least the mid-1980s, prosecutors employed a policy of removing as many black jurors as possible from trials of black defendants.

     In its 1986 ruling in Batson v. Kentucky, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed that it is unconstitutional to strike jurors solely on the basis of race and put a greater burden on the state to show that it was not engaging in such behavior. Prior to this decision, prosecutors did not have to provide a reason for striking potential jurors. This opinion was issued one month after Thomas Miller-El was convicted and sentenced to death, but applied retroactively to his case because his sentence was still on direct appeal. In Miller-El v. Cockrell, the Justices will examine whether the lower courts' failure to examine Dallas County's history of racial discrimination in conjunction with the prosecutorial strikes in Miller-El's case was proper.