Ah well, I see it's been a few weeks since we've had something to sicken the mind and spirit.
Enjoy.
https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/1579852329628860417?t=ob6g_2b6OudF70Zjxw_UTg&s=19An all-white jury convicts a Black man of killing his white wife. Three jurors oppose interracial marriage because people should “stay with their Blood Line.” His lawyers don’t object. Jury sentences him to death. No problem, says the Supreme Court.
The SC has basically said "racial animus isn't enough to invalidate a jury." If their lawyer were worth a damn they would have never been sat on the jury in the first place. But even then, the SC just basically handed the South all the freedom it needs to judge the defendant by just about anything.
The unwritten part of this is that the black man is schizophrenic and WAS convicted of killing their wife. So I'm sure the position is that "race had nothing to do with it" since they supposedly sustained the conviction just based on the evidence.
Remember a time in the US, that when people said blatantly racist shit their other critical, opinions got viewed in light of that, and that actually mattered? Like how guilty people dodge charges because of police procedural mistakes with evidence handling, because the handling of evidence is so crucial that it's worth invalidating a guilty person's trial over it being done wrong?
I guess that's not true for race.
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So reading deeper, this is an appeals case that was argued before the SC, on the basis of racial animus in the jury and ineffective representation of counsel. Evidenced by the failure to challenge these jurors before they were sat, and failing to object to clearly objectionable statements by jurors and the prosecution targeting the defendant's race.
Let's make no mistake. This guy is fucked up:
Andre Lee Thomas (born March 17, 1983) is an American convicted murderer and death row inmate known for removing both of his eyeballs in separate incidents and ingesting one of them. In 2004, Thomas killed his estranged wife Laura Boren, his four-year-old son and her one-year-old daughter in Sherman, Texas. He cut open the chests of all three victims, and he removed the two children's hearts.
Thomas, whose mental health problems began with auditory hallucinations at about age ten, was in the ninth grade when Boren became pregnant with his child. They married when Thomas was 18, but they separated soon thereafter. In the weeks leading up to the murders, Thomas had suicidal thoughts, drank heavily, and used cold medication as a recreational drug. In jail a few days after his arrest, Thomas pulled one of his eyes out of its socket. A jury rejected his insanity defense and sentenced him to death on a capital murder conviction. In 2008, he removed his other eye and ingested it.
Thomas was diagnosed with schizophrenia after his arrest, and his case has raised ethical questions about executing the mentally ill. His trial verdict was upheld by a state criminal appeals court in 2008 and by a federal appeals court in 2021. While he is still under a death sentence, Thomas is housed in a Texas prison facility for inmates with psychiatric problems.
So you have a clearly disturbed individual, who did unthinkable things, who had their insanity plea rejected, had terrible counsel and at least a partially prejudiced jury. This case before the SC was the last attempt to get an appeal based on these elements, and it was rejected.
Setting aside feelings about the death penalty and the "rightness" of the original verdict, we still have to ask "What if he'd been innocent?" Who cares about the guy who by all accounts is clearly guilty and had his race used against him by jurors. What about the guy who is innocent and his race is held against him by jurors? Or by his own counsel? If racial animus isn't enough to even at least get a new trial, then everyone is fucked. "How do you feel about insurance salesmen?" "I fucking hate them sir and would see them all rot in hell." "Welcome to the jury!"