The Dallas County District Attorney Office's long-ago practice of excluding minorities from juries is the cause of a new conviction reversal by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court's opinion in Reed v. Quarterman is here, in Adobe .pdf format.
"Conviction tossed in '78 flight attendant murder," is the report in today's Dallas Morning News by Steve McGonigle, Diane Jennings, and Jennifer Emily.
A ruling of racist jury selection tactics by Dallas County prosecutors moved a white inmate a giant step closer to a new trial after almost 30 years on Texas death row.
A three-judge federal appeals court panel in New Orleans on Monday reversed Jonathan Bruce Reed's capital murder conviction because prosecutors excluded blacks from the jury that found him guilty of murdering Braniff Airlines flight attendant Wanda Jean Wadle in 1978.
The court ruled that jury selection in Reed's trial mirrored Dallas prosecutors' approach in the 1986 trial of Thomas Miller-El, a black man whose murder conviction and death sentence were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005.
In both trials, the appeals court judges found unanimously, prosecutors used peremptory – or no-cause – challenges to remove prospective black jurors, though they'd expressed similar opinions as whites who were accepted.
State courts and a lower federal court rejected Reed's bias charge.
"Although we do not relish adding another chapter to this unfortunate story more than 30 years after the crime took place, we conclude the Constitution affords Reed a right to relief," said the opinion written by Circuit Judge Edward Prado.
Prosecutors
have 14 days to ask the judges to reconsider their decision or appeal
to the full New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The
decision ordered prosecutors to release Reed unless he gets a new trial
within 120 days. A spokesman for the Texas attorney
general's office, which has been in charge of fighting Reed's federal
appeal, said Tuesday that no decision has been made on further action.
Christi Dean, the Dallas County prosecutor now assigned to the Reed
case, said it is likely that the attorney general's office will not
appeal. If so, the district attorney's office would decide whether to
retry the case or attempt to strike a plea bargain, Dean said.
"In all likelihood, it's coming back," she said. "Miller-El was pretty
on point, and it was a Supreme Court decision."
Today's Austin American-Statesman carries Michael Graczyk's AP report, "Inmate could be freed after 30 years on Texas death row."
The 5th Circuit, in a ruling posted late Monday, said Reed's case mirrored the capital murder case of Thomas Miller-El, on death row for nearly 20 years until the Supreme Court overturned his verdict because of racial discrimination during jury selection at his Dallas County trial. Miller-El last year took a life prison sentence as part of a plea deal.
The Supreme Court cited a manual, written by a Dallas prosecutor in 1969 and used for years, that advised Dallas prosecutors on excluding minorities from juries. Documents in Miller-El's case described how the memo advises prosecutors to avoid selecting minorities because "they almost always empathize with the accused."
More on the Thomas Miller-El's case is at:
More on Miller-El v. Dretke and Miller-El v. Cockrell, the case's two trips to the Supreme Court, is from Oyez.
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