On Monday, the Supreme Court turned away an appeal from a Black man named Kristopher Love, whose death sentence was tainted by a juror’s racism. By a 6 — 3 vote, the conservative majority refused to enforce precedents protecting capital defendants from racial bias, saving itself the trouble of formally overruling them. Once again, the Supreme Court exercised its power to change the law by doing nothing, furthering its quest to subvert the normal operation of law and speed up executions in America.
Racism pervades every aspect of the death penalty, but it’s not often as obvious as it was at Love’s 2018 trial. Love’s attorneys asked prospective jurors whether they believe that some races “tend to be more violent than others” in an attempt to smoke out illicit bias. One juror, [Redacted] — who is white — answered “yes,” elaborating: “Statistics show more violent crimes are committed by certain races. I believe in statistics.”
During voir dire, [Redacted] doubled down on his beliefs. He told Love’s defense attorneys as well as the state prosecutors that he belived the “non-white” races to be the “more violent races.” He claimed that “news reports and criminology classes” bore this out, but added that his views were based on “statistics,” not “personal feelings towards one race or another.” [Redacted] then insisted that he would be a fair and impartial juror with no bias against Love on account of his race.
In Texas, defendants become eligible for capital punishment only after a jury has concluded that they’re likely to “commit criminal acts of violence” in the future. [Redacted]’s belief that Love was a member of the “more violent races” therefore posed an obvious danger: As a juror, he might take Love’s race into account when gauging his violent propensities, infecting the death sentence with an odious racial stereotype.
Love’s attorney moved to strike [Redacted]from the jury “for cause” — because of his bias — but the trial judge denied the challenge without explanation. The defense attorney then sought to use a peremptory challenge, which allows the exclusion of a prospective juror without any specific reason. But he had already used up his allotted peremptory challenges, as well as two extras that the trial judge had granted. The judge seated [Redacted] on the jury, which found Love guilty and likely to commit violent crime in the future. This finding rendered him eligible for the death penalty, which the judge imposed. [More]
I may say that the name of Kendra Hatcher, the victim, doesn’t appear in the article, nor do the circumstances of the murder.
Kristopher Love, 34, jumped out of his seat and kicked his chair on Tuesday
Love has been quiet in his Dallas hearings so far but tried to leave the room as his sister tearfully took the stand and described how 'a piece of him was gone'
He walked towards courtroom’s hold-over cell but tripped on his ankle shackles
The jury was given a recess before continuing with the hearing
He was convicted of capital murder last week for killing dentist Kendra Hatcher
He was allegedly hired as a hitman by jealous woman Brenda Delgado who wanted Love to kill Hatcher who was dating her ex-boyfriend
The thing is, everything the juror said about differential violence between races is true. Steve Sailer tried to explain it to the notorious anti-death penalty maniac Sister Helen Prejean:
The juror was right.
In the FBI’s 2020 UCR crime stats, blacks comprised 56.5% of known murder offenders. Blacks are more than 8 times more likely per capita to be a known murder offender than members of the nonblack rest of the population.https://t.co/qVgPI5Jyzgpic.twitter.com/jVLe5AKka4
James Q. Wilson put it this way, writing in the Hoover Institution book Beyond the Color Line: New Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America
A central problem — perhaps the central problem — in improving the relationship between white and black Americans is the difference in racial crime rates. No matter how innocent or guilty a stranger may be, he carries with him in public the burdens or benefits of his group identity…
Black men commit murders at a rate about eight times greater than that for white men. This disparity is not new; it has existed for well over a century. When historian Roger Lane studied murder rates in Philadelphia, he found that since 1839 the black rate has been much higher than the white rate. This gap existed long before the invention of television, the wide distribution of hand guns, or access to dangerous drugs (except for alcohol).
Blacks are blowing away police officers at rates far exceeding their own numbers. Nationally, blacks made up 40 percent of all cop killers from 1994 to 2005, even though they are only 13.4 percent of the American population.
Asked to name three people [the woman] least admired, she wrote on her questionnaire: “African-Americans, Hispanics and Haitians.”
The judge thought she was lying — possibly not realizing what it’s like being an Asian anywhere near a black neighborhood — and instead of kicking her off the jury, said she would have to come back indefinitely.
He eventually relented, but said he knew she must be lying about being "racist":
"A Federal judge relented Wednesday and commuted the sentence of indefinite jury duty he had slapped on a Brooklyn woman who presented herself as wildly racist and anti-cop.” The story also reports that the judge “made it clear it wasn’t her views that angered him but what he said was her obvious attempt to weasel out of jury duty by lying. ‘My ruling was not based in any way upon whether or not you held any racist views. It was apparent you did not tell the truth,’ Garaufis told the woman. ‘You were the only juror who indicated that you had every form of bias imaginable. You were lying to the court in order to be excused.’”
This is just mind-reading. He can’t believe anyone doesn’t like blacks, or would say so if they did, so it must be a scam to avoid jury service.
