The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Thomas...

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Thomas Miller El must be allowed to present evidence of systemic racial bias during jury selection as his case returns to the lower court. A Texas jury made up of 11 white people and 1 black sentenced Miller El to death.
In an 8-to-1 decision with implications for capital cases nationwide, the court ruled that a federal judge and a federal appeals court panel wrongly denied the defendant an opportunity to raise the issue on appeal.
The decision marks an important victory for civil rights advocates who have long complained that some prosecutors deliberately try to exclude blacks from juries, particularly when the defendant in the trial is black.
Texas prosecutors deny that race played a role in the disqualification of any jurors in Miller-El's 1986 trial. He was convicted of murdering a motel clerk during a robbery.
The US Supreme Court in a landmark 1986 decision declared such trial tactics were unconstitutional. But the court in 1986 did not offer specific instructions to trial judges about what exactly would constitute clear evidence that race had been used as an impermissible factor in jury selection.
Thus, prosecutors could continue to exclude black jurors, provided they offered a race-neutral reason to the trial judge.