The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a Dallas man Monday who claimed racial considerations affected jury selection in his capital murder trial.
Thomas Miller-El, who is black, was sentenced to death for the murder of a hotel worker in 1986.
In that trial, prosecutors used their right of peremptory strike to dismiss 10 of 11 eligible black potential jurors without giving cause.
When defendant Miller-El claimed purposeful discrimination, prosecutors were required to explain their choices.
"The prosecutors' chosen race-neutral reasons for the strikes do not hold up and are so far at odds with the evidence that pretext is the fair conclusion, indicating the very discrimination the explanations were meant to deny," Justice David H. Souter wrote in the 6-3 majority opinion.
Last year, the Supreme Court overturned three death penalty convictions from Texas.
Lily Mae Hughes, a member of the activist group Campaign to End the Death Penalty, said the decision is a "rebuke" of both the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Texas courts, which she said have been unwilling to genuinely investigate claims of discrimination.
Hughes said the death penalty is rife with racism at every stage of the criminal justice process. She said the most significant discrimination surrounds the victim's race. Defendants with white victims are much more likely to be sentenced to death, Hughes said. While about half of murder victims are white, over 80 percent of capital cases involve white victims, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Hughes supports a moratorium based on concerns with racism, classism and brutality of the death penalty.
Charles Hobson, an attorney for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, disagrees. Hobson said Monday's decision is almost a "historical artifact," because the racism that dominated the courts when Miller-El was convicted in 1986 is no longer a problem.
Hobson said the death penalty is an effective deterrent against crime, but his support of it stems from something even more basic.
"The death penalty vindicates the public interest in seeing that justice is done," Hobson said. "Certain crimes are so heinous, the only appropriate punishment is capital punishment."
Texas juries currently sentence more people to death than any other state, amounting to over one-third of U.S. executions.
But if Gov. Rick Perry approves, juries here may soon have a new option - life without the possibility of parole.
Of all the states with capital punishment, only Texas and New Mexico currently don't have the life-without-parole option.
Rep. Tony Goolsby, R-Dallas, said he sponsored the bill as a way to assure justice since the Supreme Court struck down death penalties for minors in March of this year.
Goolsby said life without the possibility of parole is a harsher punishment than death.
"When your life's gone, you're not punished anymore." he said.
Under current Texas law, juries choose between a death sentence and life with the possibility of parole in capital cases.
The new law would change life with parole to life without parole, instead of giving juries all three options as in many other states.
Goolsby said potential murderers "might stop and think twice, because they're either going to get killed or they're going to die in prison now."
Hobson, on the other hand, said life without parole is not as permanent as people think, because prisoners can still be pardoned or have their sentences commuted. Hobson said the death penalty is "the only way to make sure that the person isn't a danger to society."
For Hughes, both options are inadequate. She said life without parole is a small improvement because it will reduce the number of death sentences, but it's not ultimately a progressive move.
"It's essentially an in-house death sentence," Hughes said.
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