In the 2004 case of Thomas Joe Miller-El v. Doug Dretke, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Miller-El by a vote of 8 to 1. The court held that prosecutors had racially discriminated during jury selection at his trial for capital murder in Dallas County in 1986. The decision was based on evidence showing that prosecutors used peremptory challenges to exclude eligible black jurors from serving on the panel and also trained their staff with a manual encouraging racial bias in jury selection procedures. This violated the Equal Protection Clause under Batson v Kentucky (1986) which prohibits exclusion based on race or gender during jury selections process.

In the dissenting opinion for Thomas Joe Miller-El v. Doug Dretke, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the majority had overstepped its bounds by reevaluating factual determinations made by state courts and a federal district court. He contended that these lower courts had already found no evidence of racial bias in jury selection during Miller-El's trial, and their findings were entitled to deference under federal law. Furthermore, he criticized the majority for relying on statistical disparities in jury strikes without considering other relevant factors such as individual juror responses or prosecutor explanations. In his view, this approach was inconsistent with precedent requiring a case-by-case analysis of alleged discrimination in jury selection.