The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a death penalty case in which Floyd County prosecutors struck all prospective jurors who were African American in a capital case against a black man.
The justices voted Tuesday to hear the arguments in the next term, which starts in October.
Timothy Foster was sentenced to die in 1987 for the murder of a 79-year-old woman, Queen Madge White.
Rome police found White Aug.28, 1986, on the bedroom floor in her home, where she lived alone, after her frightened sister reported it appeared someone had broken into White’s house. A blanket covered White up to her chin and her face was coated with talcum powder. White had a broken jaw and a gash on the top of her head. She had been sexually molested with a salad-dressing bottle before she was strangled.
Foster was arrested for White’s murder a month later after police, responding to a report that he had threatened his live-in companion. The found items reported missing from White’s house. He eventually confessed, according to court records.
Lawyers from the Southern Center for Human Rights, who are representing Foster, say prosecutor’s notes show a racial bias in jury selection. According to the appeal, the name of prospective black jurors were highlighted and the word “black” was circled in the race question on the questionnaires given to each prospective jurors. The notes identified them as “B#1,” “B#2,” and “B#3.”
The notes also show that the prosecution’s’ investigator ranked black prospective jurors in case they had to seat an African American. There were four prospective jurors in the pool of 42 people qualified to hear a death penalty case; prosecutors struck all four.
Attorneys for the state successfully argued before the Georgia Supreme Court that prosecutors had legitimate, race-neutral reasons for striking the four African Americans and they did not rely on the investigator’s notes. Those same arguments have been raised with the U.S. Supreme Court.
Foster went to trial the year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional to exclude jurors based on their race.
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