As recently as 2002, Dallas County prosecutors were excluding eligible blacks from juries at more than twice the rate they turned down whites, a newspaper reported Sunday.
The issue surfaced earlier this year when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1986 murder conviction of a black man accused of killing a white motel clerk, saying the Dallas County jury that convicted Thomas Miller-El was unfairly stacked with whites.
The Supreme Court cited a manual, written in 1969 and used until at least 1980, that instructed prosecutors on how to exclude minorities from Texas juries. Justice David Souter wrote that racial discrimination in the Miller-El case was unquestionable.
Bill Hill, who took over as district attorney in 1999, said his prosecutors don't exclude jurors on the basis of race.
"The statistics may show we strike more blacks, but
it's not because they're black," Hill said. "It's because for one reason or another, they (prosecutors) don't think they are going to be fair and impartial."....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050821/ap_on_re_us/juries_blacks&printer=1
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