Term: 2015
Docket: 14-8349
Foster v. Chatman
- Pro
14-8349 FOSTER V. CHATMAN DECISION BELOW: 14-8349 order CERT. GRANTED 5/26/2015 QUESTION PRESENTED: In this capital case involving a black defendant and a white victim, Georgia struck all four black prospective jurors and provided roughly a dozen "race-neutral" reasons for each of the four strikes. The prosecutor later argued that the jury should impose a death sentence to "deter other people out there in the projects." At the trial level and on direct appeal, Georgia's courts denied the defendant's claim of race discrimination under Batson v. Kentucky, 4 76 U.S. 79 (1986). In habeas proceedings, the defendant obtained the prosecution's notes from jury selection, which were previously withheld. The notes reflect that the prosecution (1) marked the name of each black prospective juror in green highlighter on four different copies of the jury list; (2) circled the word "BLACK'' next to the "Race" question on the juror questionnaires of five black prospective jurors; (3) identified three black prospective jurors as "B#1," "B#2," and "B#3"; (4) ranked the black prospective jurors against each other in case "it comes down to having to pick one of the black jurors;" and (5) created strike lists that contradict the "race-neutral" explanation provided by the prosecution for its strike of one of the black prospective jurors. The Georgia courts again declined to find a Batson violation. The question presented is this: Did the Georgia courts err in failing to recognize race discrimination under Batson in the extraordinary circumstances of this death penalty case? LOWER COURT CASE NUMBER: S14E0771
The U.S. Supreme Court case Foster v. Chatman (2015) revolved around the issue of racial discrimination in jury selection during a 1987 murder trial in Georgia, where Timothy Tyrone Foster, an African American man was convicted by an all-white jury for murdering a white woman. The defense team argued that prosecutors had violated Batson v. Kentucky (1986), which prohibits striking potential jurors on the basis of race, as they systematically excluded black prospective jurors from Foster's trial. In 2006, through Freedom of Information Act requests, it was discovered that prosecution notes highlighted black potential jurors' names and marked them with "B" indicating their intention to exclude them based on race alone - evidence not available at the original trial or appeal process due to prosecutorial privilege laws in Georgia at that time. In May 2016, nearly three decades after his conviction and death sentence were handed down; the Supreme Court ruled by a vote of seven to one that prosecutors had indeed unconstitutionally barred all eligible African-Americans from serving on Foster’s jury because of their race.
There was no dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court case Foster v. Chatman, 2015. The court ruled unanimously (7-1) that prosecutors had violated the Constitution by excluding African Americans from the jury based on their race during Timothy Tyrone Foster's trial in Georgia state court for capital murder. Justice Clarence Thomas did not join fully with his colleagues and wrote a separate opinion concurring only in judgment but did not dissent or disagree with the majority ruling of racial discrimination in jury selection.
