WASHINGTON—The lawyer for a black death row inmate in Mississippi told a sympathetic Supreme Court on March 20 that her client’s 2010 conviction at his sixth trial on the same charges was tainted because the white prosecutor unconstitutionally excluded blacks from the jury at that trial and at others that preceded it.
“When all of the evidence in this case is considered ... the conclusion that race was a substantial part of [Montgomery County District Attorney Doug] Evans’ motivation is inescapable, and the Mississippi Supreme Court’s conclusion to the contrary is clearly erroneous,” said attorney Sheri Lynn Johnson, a professor at Cornell Law School and assistant director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project.
