WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has thrown out a death sentence handed to a black man in Georgia because prosecutors improperly kept African-Americans off the jury that convicted him of killing a white woman.
The justices ruled 7-1 Monday in favor of death row inmate Timothy Tyrone Foster in underscoring the importance of rules that they laid out in 1986 to prevent racial discrimination in the selection of juries.
But the court did nothing to limit lawyers’ discretionary decisions to reject potential jurors, a practice that the late Thurgood Marshall once said would allow racial discrimination to persist in jury selection,
The outcome probably will enable Foster to win a new trial, 29 years after he was sentenced to death.
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