"The Supreme Court has long held that the Constitution prohibits prosecutors from striking Black people from jury service based on their race. Yet the practice continues...." In a powerful op-ed published by The Washington Post, the former director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, Stephen Bright, calls for the US Supreme Court to take up the case of Jenner & Block's client, Warren King.
Mr. King, who is intellectually limited and diagnosed with schizophrenia, was sentenced to death in Georgia in 1998. The prosecutor in his trial struck seven of eight prospective Black jurors from Mr. King's Jury and only three of 34 White jurors. "This was egregious racial discrimination," said Bright.
"Now the court has an opportunity to send a message to prosecutors across the country that this abhorrent practice is unacceptable – and it should not hesitate to do so. The right to a fair trial before an impartial jury of one's peers is one of the criminal legal system's most basic principles. But for many Black people, the promise is illusory," writes Bright.
The Supreme Court prohibited race-based jury strikes in a decision called Batson in 1986. Yet Batson is often violated. In the case of Mr. King, two judges in his first appeal called the strikes "troubling" and the third judge noted the prosecutor's "open disdain and outright contempt for Batson" and "the abundant evidence of discrimination showed a violation of that ruling.
Jenner & Block Partner Matt Hellman and Associates Mary Marshall and Donovan Hicks are representing Mr. King in seeking certiorari in U.S. Supreme Court from the 11th Circuit's denial of his Batson claim and asking that his conviction be vacated because of rank racial discrimination by the prosecutor.
They are joined in representing Mr. King by the Jenner & Block Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic at the University of Chicago and the Georgia Resource Center. Jenner, the Clinic, and the Georgia Resource Center successfully represented Michael Nance in the Supreme Court in a death penalty case that Matt argued in 2022.
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