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| High Court to Hear Texas Death Case |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 10/17/2002 |
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The U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal Wednesday from a black death row inmate who claims prosecutors deliberately kept blacks off his jury. The justices could use the case to clarify the rules for claiming racial discrimination during jury selection. In Thomas Miller-El's 1986 murder trial, prosecutors used peremptory challenges - legal objections that allow lawyers to dismiss prospective jurors without having to give an explanation - to reject 10 of 11 blacks. The jury was made up of nine whites, one Filipino, one Hispanic and one black. Miller-El came within a week of execution when the high court agreed in February to hear his case. He has maintained his innocence and said his trial was a racist experience. 'To me, it was like being in the middle of a Ku Klux Klan meeting, and it was kind of like legal. It was a hell of an experience,' he said in a prison interview last month. Miller-El, 50, argues that he should have been allowed to present historical data and other statistics showing what his lawyers say is a long pattern of discrimination among prosecutors. The evidence was disallowed on appeal by the lower courts. Miller-El was condemned for the 1985 slaying of a hotel clerk during a holdup. The clerk was shot in the back as he lay bound and gagged on the floor of a Holiday Inn near Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. A second clerk who was wounded identified Miller-El. |
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