On November 7, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant review to Texas inmate Duane Buck. Buck sought a new sentencing trial because of testimony suggesting he posed a greater danger to society because he is black. During his trial, psychologist Dr. Walter Quijano told the court that Buck’s race increased the likelihood of his future dangerousness. Three of the Justices on the Court (Alito, Scalia and Breyer), which had granted Buck a stay just before his scheduled execution on September 15, said his case was different from other similar cases where relief was granted because it was Buck’s defense attorney who was responsible for eliciting the offensive testimony. Justices Sotomayor and Kagan dissented, stating, “Today the court denies review of a death sentence marred by racial overtones. . . . Buck did not argue that his race made him less dangerous, and the prosecutor had no need to revisit the issue. But she did, in a question specifically designed to persuade the jury that Buck’s race made him more dangerous and that, in part on this basis, he should be sentenced to death.” (See more on this case below.)
On the same day, the Supreme Court reinstated the death sentence of Archie Dixon in Ohio. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned Dixon’s conviction after finding that his confession to a murder was invalid due to police coercion. The Court granted certiorari and reversed this decision, noting that federal courts must give great deference to state court findings, and writing in an unsigned opinion that "there is no evidence that any of Dixon's statements was the product of actual coercion." (Bobby v. Dixon, No.10-1540).
A new video produced by the American Civil Liberties Union features three North Carolina citizens who believe they were excluded from serving on juries in capital cases because of their race. The video was released in conjunction with the first court challenge brought under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act. The defendant, Marcus Robinson, is asking his death sentence be commuted to life without parole because potential African-American jurors were struck from his jury at a rate 3.5 times higher than other potential jurors. Laverne Keys (pictured), who was excluded from a capital jury in 1999, believes she was removed because of her race: “It made me feel like I was back in 1960, that racism is still very much alive. It makes you wonder whether all these people are being given a fair trial or given a fair consequence so far as the death penalty,” she said in the video. Denny LeBoeuf, Director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, said, “The stories presented in this video make clear that the death penalty system in North Carolina and across the nation is plagued by discrimination. The Racial Justice Act is a crucial means of ensuring that no one is wrongfully executed because of racial bias.” 
North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue vetoed the bill that would have repealed the state's Racial Justice Act that was passed in 2009. The Act allows death row inmates to appeal their death sentences based on statistical studies showing racial bias. In issuing the veto, the governor, who supports the death penalty, said, “I am vetoing Senate Bill 9 for the same reason that I signed the Racial Justice Act two years ago: it is simply unacceptable for racial prejudice to play a role in the imposition of the death penalty in North Carolina.” State courts have only recently begun to hear the first appeals filed under the Racial Justice Act. The Act provides that a death row inmate who receives a reprieve through a racial-discrimination challenge will receive a sentence of life without parole. The Governor also added, "[B]ecause the death penalty is the ultimate punishment, it is essential that it be carried out fairly and that the process not be infected with prejudice based on race." Civil rights leaders and some family members of murder victims had met with the governor and encouraged her to veto the repeal, which was passed after significant changes in the legislature in 2010.
On November 28 the North Carolina Senate voted to repeal the state's Racial Justice Act, which allowed death row inmates to use statistical evidence of racial bias to challenge their sentences. The House had earlier approved the repeal measure. The Act was passed in 2009, and the first cases brought under the law are just now being considered in state court. There were considerable shifts in the state's legislature in the wake of the 2010 elections, leading to the repeal bill. Prosecutors had been unsuccessfully fighting application of the law in the courts and have pushed for legislative action. The Act provides that a death row inmate who receives a reprieve through a racial discrimination challenge will receive a sentence of life without parole. Darryl Hunt, a former inmate who spent 19 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, reminded the Senate Judiciary Committee that five of the seven inmates who have been exonerated from North Carolina’s death row were, like him, African-American. Hunt said, “I was one vote away from the death penalty. I had 11 whites and one black on my jury. If you think that race did not play a factor in my case, then you're not living here in North Carolina." North Carolina Governor Beverly Purdue, who signed the Racial Justice Act into law in 2009--saying it would ensure death sentences were imposed "based on the facts and the law, not racial prejudice"--must now consider whether to veto the repeal.
On October 19, five African Americans filed a federal civil rights lawsuit charging that Alabama has illegally excluded blacks from serving on death penalty juries in Houston and Henry Counties. The plaintiffs in this class action suit were all previously barred from serving on juries in capital or other serious felony cases. In each case, state courts found blacks were illegally excluded from jury service because of their race. Bryan Stevenson, lead attorney for the plaintiffs and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, pointed particularly to the actions of District Attorney Douglas Valeska: "Mr. Valeska has repeatedly been found to have illegally excluded black people from jury service with peremptory strikes in capital cases but he continues the practice because most people don't know about it." He continued, "The underrepresentation and exclusion of people of color from juries has seriously damaged the credibility and reliability of the criminal justice system. Individual case reversals haven't stopped this illegal practice, so there must be greater accountability." The lawsuit alleges that, from 2006 to 2010, state prosecutors in Dothan used peremptory strikes to exclude 82% of qualified black jurors in death penalty cases. As a result, the jury in every death penalty case in Houston County over this period has been either all white or had only a single black juror, despite the fact that the circuit is nearly 25% African American. Houston County has the highest per capita death sentencing rate in Alabama.
