Courts

You Asked The Potential Jurors What? And Still Let Them Sit?

There's no way this is relevant. Wait, is this relevant? Why is this still a thing?

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492683Have you ever read an out-of-field argument that ended up being really on the nose? I saw a piece written by one of the co-counsel on the widely known Loving v. Virginia — a landmark 1967 case that made interracial marriage legal — that tried to connect it to the murder trial of Andre Thomas.  I honestly thought Philip Hirschkop’s take would be interesting, but a hot one at best. I. Was. Wrong. I had a difficult time when the words Mr. Hirschkop quoted were from the Loving or Thomas case. Give it a try yourself!

“The fact that [God] separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

“We should stay with our Blood Line.”

“[I]nterracial marriage was ‘harmful for the children involved because they do not have a specific race to belong to.”’

In arguing to the jury that Thomas should be sentenced to death, the prosecutor asked, “Are you going to take the risk [that, if sentenced to life imprisonment and later released on parole] about him asking your daughter out, or your granddaughter out?”

Now, I’ll admit the last quote showed my hand — the last quote was from the  Thomas trial. But so were the two above it. Those quotes are an opinion shared by at least three of the jurors present for Mr. Thomas’s trial. It should boggle my mind that agreeing with these statements were not immediate boots from the jury in 2005, but then again, we did just have a contested lynching trial in November of 2021. In the conclusion on that trial, we know that the defense relied on racial tropes in an attempt to wipe Mr. Arbury’s blood on his own hands. They were very intent on trying to fit as many “Bubbas” on the jury as they could. There is no doubt in my mind that a similar thing happened in Mr. Thomas’s trial.

Andre Thomas’s case may be reviewed for petition by the Supreme Court. If they accept it, it would be very easy to make as small a legal decision about the types of questions prosecutors can ask jurors during trial. What I want the Court to do, that is, if they have the heart to — and I’m really just putting my hope in Sotomayor at this point — is to recognize that this intersection of Blackness and mental heath go to the heart of an idea that sits at the heart of our trial system: the (im)possibility of an impartial jury. We will see how the Court responds on January 7th.

54 Years After Loving: Is Interracial Marriage A SCOTUS Issue Again? [Bloomberg Law]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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