A federal appeals court judge criticised 2 colleagues...

A federal appeals court judge criticised 2 colleagues for denying a death-row inmate's appeal. In a dissenting opinion, Judge Dolores K. Sloviter, of the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, said she would have granted a new trial to James W. Riley, an African-American, because she believes that Delaware prosecutors improperly kept black people off Riley's jury. "One of the principal objections to the operation of the death penalty in this country is that it is applied unevenly, particularly against poor black defendants," Sloviter wrote. "I am afraid that the majority's decision will do nothing to dispel that view." Riley was convicted by an all-white jury in 1982 in Dover, Del., of 1st-degree murder, and sentenced to death for robbing and killing James Feeley, 59, inside Feeley's liquor store. Sloviter's two colleagues, Circuit Judges Samuel A. Alito Jr., of Newark, N.J., and Walter K. Stapleton, of Wilmington, Del., agreed with Delaware state courts that race had nothing to do with the prosecutors' decision to strike the 3 blacks from the jury pool.