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May 26th, 2016 
Awake Goy 
Michaela Whitton (AM) : The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned the sentence of a man on death row after it ruled prosecutors deliberately kept African Americans off the jury. The crackdown on racist prosecutions saw justices vote 7 to 1 to decide prosecutors were motivated by bias when they removed black jurors from the trial of a 19-year-old African American almost thirty years ago.
In 1987, Timothy Foster was convicted of the brutal murder and molestation of Queen Madge White after he broke into the retired teacher’s home in Butts County, Georgia. He had previously been labelled a troubled teen and has been on death row in Georgia since his conviction. Prior to his trial, all potential black jurors were removed from the case. At the time, the prosecution claimed this was not related to race — and a fully white jury proceeded to convict Foster and sentence him to death. The young man lived in government housing, and the prosecutor ruled his sentence would “deter other people out there in the projects.”
Foster’s lawyers had been appealing for probable cause for a retrial since he was sentenced, but it was only after a decade of denied motions that the jury selection notes were finally released. Nineteen years after the trial, the documents obtained by his attorney under Georgia’s open records act proved prosecutors had clearly chosen jurors in his case based on race.
Under the heading “Definite NOs,” prosecutors listed six potential jurors and all but one was black. The name of each black juror was marked in highlighter on copies of the jury list, and the word “BLACK” written next to the “Race” question. It was circled and highlighted on questionnaires of the prospective jurors. Three were identified as B#1, B#2, and B#3, ranking them against each other in case it came down to “having to pick one of the black jurors,” according to the Death Penalty Information Centre.
The Supreme Court ruling means a state court will now reverse Foster’s original conviction. The only dissenter in Monday’s high-profile case was the only black justice, Clarence Thomas, who said Foster’s original conviction should be upheld. Reflecting on the victory, Foster’s lawyer, Stephen Bright, said the intent to discriminate only became apparent because he was able to obtain the prosecution notes, which was unusual. Claiming the practice of discrimination by striking jurors continues in courtrooms across the country, he added:
“Usually courts ignore patterns of race discrimination and accept false reasons for the strikes. Even after the undeniable evidence of discrimination was presented in this case, the Georgia courts ignored it and upheld Foster’s conviction and death sentence.”
Michaela Whitton, The AntiMedia
Source Article from http://nsnbc.me/2016/05/26/mans-death-sentence-overturned-after-jury-selection-found-to-be-openly-racist/
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