Batson and the “O.J. factor”
http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/2007/06/batson_and_the.html
That is what the defense lawyer for Allen Snyder, on death row in Louisiana, has called “the O.J. card,” suggesting that it was a calculated maneuver by the prosecutor to use O.J. Simpson’s controversial acquittal for murder to get an all-white jury in Louisiana to give Snyder the death penalty.
Now, the Snyder case is back before the Supreme Court, with the prospect that the Court may act on his appeal as early as Monday. The case, Snyder v. Louisiana (06-10119), was considered by the Justices at their Conference on Thursday. It reached the Court in the context of a claim that the jury that convicted Snyder of the stabbing murder of his estranged wife’s boyfriend was all-white because prosecutors intended it to be that way, and used their automatic (”peremptory”) challenges to achieve that end. Once having such a jury assembled, the appeal argues, a prosecutor — who had referred before trial to the case as his “O.J. Simpson case” — knew the jury was open to a racial plea for death.
The jury process, the appeal contends, violated the Supreme Court’s 1986 ruling in Batson v. Kentucky, barring the use of race-based peremptory challenges in jury selection. It also asserts that the Louisiana Supreme Court did not follow the Supreme Court’s post-Batson decision, Miller-El v. Dretke in 2005, mandating a full analysis of the circumstances of jury selection to detect Batson violations.
But the case also raises, implicitly, the larger question of whether prosecutors’ references to the O.J. Simpson case, in trials involving charges against blacks, are a form of jury contamination that puts a vivid emphasis on race in jury selection and in other phases of the trial and sentencing.
State prosecutors, though, have urged the Supreme Court to bypass the case, saying that Snyder’s lawyer did not preserve many of the claims about a Batson violation, and did not show that prosecutors in the case were exploiting the race issue with the jury. The state court, Louisiana’s attorneys contend, faithfully applied Batson and Miller-El.
