Supreme Court Continues to Police Texas Death Penalty

In the last few years, the US Supreme Court has spent an unusual amount of their docket on Texas death penalty appeals. The justices hear oral arguments in around 100 cases a year; only a small percentage of those are criminal. Yet they have taken four death penalty appeals from Texas in the last two years.

Today, the Court announced that after twenty years of appeals, Thomas Miller-El would be granted a new trial. Miller-El was sentenced to death for his role in a murder-robbery of a Holiday Inn.

Miller-El won a new trial because the Court found that Dallas County prosecutors used their peremptory strikes to eliminate African-Americans from the jury. Racially motivated peremptory strikes are a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. See "Selecting a Jury" in my Guide to Texas Criminal Cases for a discussion of racially motivated peremptory strikes.

Read the Supreme Court opinion here.