Prompt: Timothy Foster was an 18-year-old black man in 1986 when he was charged with the murder of an elderly white woman. During jury selection, the prosecution struck all four of the black jurors who were qualified using peremptory challenges. The defense counsel objected to those strikes but the court held that the prosecution’s rational for excluding them were sufficient. Foster was convicted of the murder by an all-white jury and was sentenced to death. Foster filed a post-judgment discovery motion for the prosecutions jury selection notes but the court denied the request. Two decades later, Foster filed a habeas corpus petition on a BatsonDoctrine violation because he had obtained the prosecutions jury selection notes through the Georgia Open Records Act. The court denied his habeas corpuspetition and the Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed. The Supreme Court of the United States, however, granted certiorari and in a 71 decision determined that sufficient evidence existed to establish a Batson Doctrine violation of purposeful discrimination. Chief Roberts in the opinion of the Court stated that although the prosecutor had provided a list of reasons the black jurors had been excluded, the jury selection notes showed that the prosecutor had written definitely no by the names of the five black jurors, which is evidence that the jurors were never seriously considered to be on the jury. The opinion furthered that the notes continually highlighted race, and the reasons given for striking the black jurors were not applied to prospective white jurors who were chosen to sit on the jury. What do you think? Please answer the following questions:
1. Should the original trial and state appellate courts over two decades earlier have come to the same conclusion as the U.S. Supreme Court did in 2016?
2. Do you think this kind of purposeful discrimination still occurs today in jury selection 30 years after the Batson decision?
3. What methods do you think the courts could adopt to ensure race-neutral jury selection processes?
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