In his closing argument, the prosecutor, having struck from the panel all the potential black jurors, compared the defendant, a black man charged with stabbing his wife to death, to O. J. Simpson and told the all-white jury that Mr. Simpson, acquitted of murder 10 months earlier, had “got away with it.”
The Louisiana Supreme Court reaffirmed the murder conviction and death sentence of the man, Allen Snyder, and on Tuesday, Mr. Snyder’s case was back before the United States Supreme Court. Compared to June 2005, it was a different court. Just how different was the question, a question that transcended Mr. Snyder’s case.
By mid-2005, in part because of the influence of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the court had begun to apply close and skeptical scrutiny to lower court rulings that appeared to give only cursory attention to death-row inmates’ claims of inadequate legal assistance or racial bias.
At that time, the court overturned the 20-year-old murder conviction of a Texas inmate, Thomas Miller-El, on the ground that his jury selection had been racially biased, and told the Louisiana Supreme Court to apply that ruling to its reconsideration of the racial bias claim it had rejected in Mr. Snyder’s case.
The Snyder case, Snyder v. Louisiana, No. 06-10119, has returned to the Supreme Court amid signs that a new majority was more inclined to deference than skepticism toward the lower courts. A 5-to-4 decision last June in Uttecht v. Brown emphasized the “superior position” of trial judges in assessing whether jurors could fairly apply the death penalty. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who joined the majority in the Miller-El case in 2005, wrote the majority opinion in the latest case.
In the argument in Mr. Snyder’s appeal on Tuesday, the inmate’s lawyer, Stephen B. Bright, was vigorously grilled by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and by Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
They challenged Mr. Bright’s assertions, similar to those that the court had accepted in the Miller-El case, that the prosecutor had demonstrated racial bias in the way he questioned black jurors differently or responded differently to their answers compared to white jurors’ answers.
For example, the prosecutor removed a black juror, a student teacher who said he was concerned about serving on the panel during his required classroom observation period, while retaining a white juror, a contractor who said he needed to finish important projects and care for his sick wife.
The trial judge’s law clerk had called the student teacher’s dean and relayed assurance that the student could miss a few days of observation without penalty. Learning this, the student, Jeffrey Brooks, said he would be able to serve on the jury, but the prosecutor used one of his peremptory challenges to remove him.
Justice Scalia told Mr. Bright that the prosecutor’s response was appropriate. “I don’t understand how the dean could resolve his problem,” Justice Scalia said.
Mr. Bright, taken aback by the question, responded, “Well, he’s the dean.”
Justice Scalia said, “I don’t think deans have the ability to waive degree requirements.”
Told that Mr. Brooks had said “O.K.” to whether he could serve, Justice Scalia said: “My reaction would depend on how he said ‘O.K.’ If I were sitting there as the trial judge, I could discern whether ‘O.K.’ meant, ‘Well, you know, that’s what he says, but I’m still going to have a hard time digging out those hours for the remaining time that I have in the term.’ I don’t know how he said ‘O.K.’”
Under the court’s 1986 ruling in Batson v. Kentucky, the prosecutor has to provide a “race neutral” explanation when questioned about a seeming pattern of racial jury selection.
In this case, Mr. Bright said that “you can pick each piece out, each leaf out, and you can try to find an innocent explanation for it,” but that race remained the most obvious explanation.
Justice Kennedy was uncharacteristically silent as the argument progressed. With only minutes remaining, he finally spoke, referring to his opinion last June.
“Do you think the deference in Uttecht should be any greater than in Batson, where we have the sensitive issue of racial discrimination?” he asked Terry M. Boudreaux, assistant attorney general of Louisiana.
The question was opaque, and Mr. Boudreaux told the justice that he was not sure he understood it. But in context, the meaning seemed clear. Justice Kennedy was struggling to decide whether he was the justice of 2005 or the justice of the last term. His answer is likely to determine the outcome of this case and many others.