The 6-2 ruling was the second in the court’s new term to overturn a death sentence, and it could be a harbinger of things to come. The justices heard another death penalty case from Texas in November that hinges on a prisoner’s intellectual disability.
Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the ruling in favor of Duane Buck, who was sentenced to death following the testimony of a defense witness in 1996 who said he would be more dangerous in the future because he is black. Buck either will be re-sentenced to life in prison or will receive a new sentencing hearing.
The testimony “said, in effect, that the color of Buck’s skin made him more deserving of execution,” Roberts wrote. “No competent defense attorney would introduce such evidence about his own client.”
The effect of that testimony, Roberts said, “cannot be dismissed as de minimis. Buck has demonstrated prejudice.”
Texas had agreed several years after Buck’s sentencing to reconsider the sentences of seven prisoners following similar testimony, but they excluded Buck from the list because the prosecution was not to blame. Roberts said such testimony from the defense is even more prejudicial.
“Buck may have been sentenced to death in part because of his race,” the chief justice said. “As an initial matter, this is a disturbing departure from a basic premise of our criminal justice system: Our law punishes people for what they do, not who they are.”
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. Thomas wrote that the racial testimony was secondary to “the heinousness off petitioner’s crime and his complete lack of remorse” for having shot and killed a former girlfriend in the street.
At oral argument in October, it was clear a majority of justices would not let the death sentence stand. Even Alito, a former prosecutor known for being tough on crime, said “what occurred at the penalty phase of this trial is indefensible.”
“Today, the Supreme Court made clear that there is no place for racial bias in the American criminal justice system,” said Buck’s attorney, Christina Swarns, litigation director at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “The court has reaffirmed the longstanding principle that criminal punishments – particularly the death penalty – cannot be based on immutable characteristics such as race.”
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