"5th Circuit reverses itself; reinstates guilty decision in officer's death," is the title of Mike Tollson's report in today's Houston Chronicle.
Two years after reversing the capital murder conviction of a Houston man convicted of killing a police officer, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed itself and reinstated his guilty verdict, apparently clearing the way for his execution.
Acting in light of a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the case last year, the 5th Circuit opinion reinstated the conviction of Anthony Cardell Haynes for the death of Houston Police Sgt. Kent Kincaid in 1998. In its opinion, issued Friday, the court ruled that the original reason for tossing out the conviction was not technically required by law.
The 5th Circuit had reversed Haynes' conviction in 2009 because of what it called an error by a trial judge during jury selection. Haynes is black, and prosecutors had used four of their peremptory strikes to knock black panelists off the jury. Race cannot be used as a reason to strike potential jurors, and Haynes' lawyers said District Court Judge Jim Wallace had erred when he overruled defense objections over the striking of two of the four. Only one black person served on the jury.
Haynes' trial was unusual. Two judges, Wallace and Lon Harper, split the pre-trial duties. Harper had witnessed the questioning of the two potential jurors at issue. But it was Wallace who had to rule on the defense objections.
Because prosecutors claimed it was the demeanor of the two potential jurors - not their race - that got them bumped, it only made sense that the judge who actually saw their demeanor should have to rule on the objection, Haynes' appellate lawyer argued.
And:
Because the Texas appeals court looked only at the written record, the 5th Circuit judges said that it did not find it necessary to defer to the TCCA's judgment on "an issue that turns entirely on demeanor."
The state, in turn, appealed to the Supreme Court. The high court overturned the 5th Circuit's reversal, saying it has never decreed precisely what a judge has to do when considering whether a juror had been improperly struck because of race. A judge must only follow the general rule of undertaking a "sensitive inquiry" into evidence surrounding the prosecutors' intent, and take into account all possible explanations, the court stated.
"This general requirement, however, did not clearly establish the rule on which the Court of Appeals' decision rests," the Supreme Court stated last year.
As for the 5th Circuit's assertion that a review of the written transcript can't provide much insight into the way a potential juror acted while being questioned, the high court said that does not matter.
"Federal court rejects Houston cop killer's appeal," Michael Graczyk's AP filing, also via the Chronicle.
A federal appeals court has rejected an appeal from the convicted killer of an off-duty Houston police officer arguing that two jurors at his capital murder trial in 1999 were improperly rejected by prosecutors because they were black.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholds a ruling from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in the case of 32-year-old Anthony Haynes, who is black. He was condemned to death for the 1998 shooting death of Houston Police Sgt. Kent Kincaid, who was white.
Acting on an appeal from the Texas attorney general's office, the U.S. Supreme Court had ordered the 5th Circuit to reconsider its 2009 decision that Haynes get a new trial or be released from death row. The Supreme Court had in 1986 found it unconstitutional to dismiss a juror solely because of race, but the justices said the 5th Circuit panel misinterpreted its rulings when it decided Haynes deserved a new trial.
In its ruling Friday, the New Orleans-based court said that while circumstantial indications of intentional racial discrimination raised by Haynes' lawyers had "some persuasive value," it found the decision by prosecutors to use peremptory strikes when selecting a jury "was not based on purposeful racial discrimination."
The Fifth Circuit ruling in Haynes v. Thaler is in Adobe .pdf format.
Related posts are in the race index. More on Batson v. Kentucky, the 1986 Supreme Court ruling, is via Oyez.
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