What were the facts about the case Miller-El v Dretke and the decision of the trail court?

Answer 1

Miller El had been convicted of capital murder in the death of one hotel employee, and the serious injury of another, whom he had tied up and shot in the process of committing an armed robbery. The facts of the case were not contested; the questions before the US Supreme Court were:

"1. Did the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, by rejecting Miller-El's claim the prosecution purposefully excluded blacks from his jury, violate the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Miller-El v. Cockrell (2003)? 2. Did the Texas jury selection manual encourage unconstitutional disparate questioning based on race?"

Miller-El v. Dretke, (2005) contested the prosecution's use of peremptory challenges and "jury shuffle" to exclude ten of the eleven African-Americans in the jury pool. The defense held the selection practice was discriminatory and violated the precedent set in Batson v. Kentucky, (2006), resulting in Miller-El being convicted and sentenced to death.

The Supreme Court noted their review of practices of the Dallas County Prosecutor's Office, and voir dire testimony, indicated the Prosecutor had deliberately manipulated members of the jury pool in order to exclude African-Americans from hearing Miller-El's case.

The facts of the case and the jury verdict were not in dispute, only the sentencing and appellate court's refusal to grant post-conviction relief.

In a 6-3 decision, the US Supreme Court held the defendant's civil rights had been violated under the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause, overturned the sentence, and remanded the case to the trial court for resentencing (excluding the death penalty).

More Information:

Miller-El and several accomplices bound and gagged two employees of a Texas hotel in the course of a robbery. Miller-El shot both employees, killing one and severely wounding the other. The defendant was subsequently tried for capital murder.

During jury selection, the prosecution used peremptory challenges to exclude ten of the eleven qualified African-American jurors. Miller-El's attorney objected, stating the prosecutor was deliberately excluding jurors on the basis of race, a habit he alleged was common in the Dallas County District Attorney's Office. The trial court reviewed evidence related to this claim, but found no indication of "systematic exclusion of blacks as a matter of policy." The judge denied the defense request to select a new jury, and Miller-El was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to death.

While Miller-El's case was awaiting appeal, the US Supreme Court lowered the threshold for determining discrimination in jury selection in the case Batson v. Kentucky, (1986), such that "discrimination by the prosecutor in selecting the defendant's jury sufficed to establish [a Fourteenth Amendment] constitutional violation."

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest appellate court for criminal cases, remanded the case to the trial court to give the defendant an opportunity to demonstrate the prosecution deliberately struck jurors on the basis of race. The trial court found in favor of the prosecution. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed this ruling, finding the reasons stated for excluding the jurors we race-neutral and acceptable.

Miller-El next sought relief from the federal court (under 28 USC § 2254) by petitioning the US District Court for a writ of habeas corpus under the Batson rule. The District Court denied relief in Miller-El v. Johnson, Civil No. 3:96-CV-1992-H (ND Tex., June 5, 2000), App. 987, and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit "precluded appeal by denying a certificate of appealability, Miller-El v. Johnson,261 F. 3d 445 (2001)."

The US Supreme Court granted certiorari for Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U. S. 322 (2003), reversing the Fifth Circuit's denial of appealability, and holding there was sufficient evidence in the records of the Dallas County District Attorney's Office to warrant placing the case before a jury.

The Fifth Circuit then rejected Miller-El's Batson claim on the merits. The US Supreme Court granted certiorari a second time in Miller-El v. Cockrell, 542 U. S. 936 (2004), and reversed the Fifth Circuit decision again.

The case came before the Court under the title Miller-El v. Dretke, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Criminal Institutions Division.

Justice Souter wrote, in the opinion of the Court, that the Court had attempted to preserve peremptory challenges allowing attorneys to reject a set number of jurors for no stated reason in Batson, and in an earlier case, Swain v. Alabama, (1965). Souter acknowledged the difficulty in ferreting out overt discrimination when the selection is discretionary by nature. In Batson, "...we recognized that [the] requirement to show an extended pattern imposed a "crippling burden of proof" that left prosecutors' use of peremptories "largely immune from constitutional scrutiny.""

The Court's decision in Batson v. Kentucky had, for the first time, allowed the defense to challenge the prosecution's peremptory dismissals, and required the prosecution to supply a racially neutral explanation; however, the prosecution had proven itself capable of devising facially acceptable, if false, reasons for exercising his (or her) discretion, so the decision was less protective of Fourteenth Amendment Due Process rights than expected.

Souter wrote: "The numbers describing the prosecution's use of peremptories are remarkable. Out of 20 black members of the 108-person venire panel for Miller-El's trial, only 1 served. Although 9 were excused for cause or by agreement, 10 were peremptorily struck by the prosecution. "The prosecutors used their peremptory strikes to exclude 91% of the eligible African-American venire members ... . Happenstance is unlikely to produce this disparity.""

"More powerful than these bare statistics, however, are side-by-side comparisons of some black venire panelists who were struck and white panelists allowed to serve. If a prosecutor's proffered reason for striking a black panelist applies just as well to an otherwise-similar nonblack who is permitted to serve, that is evidence tending to prove purposeful discrimination to be considered at Batson's third step."

In determining the outcome of the case, the justices read voir dire (jury selection) testimony given under oath, comparing the African-Americans who had been rejected with the Caucasians who had been allowed to serve. The Court noted that the prosecution had withheld the full testimony of at least one African-American juror who was struck but whom the Court considered an ideal candidate for the prosecution, while accepting Caucasians whose stated beliefs made them less ideal candidates.

The Court found other explanations for dismissing African-American potential jury members less than credible. Souter also noted that some of the African-Americans questioned earlier had supported capital punishment and were rejected, while some of the Caucasians questioned later were uncertain about using the death penalty and would have been worse for the prosecution's case.

After discussing comparisons between individual jury members at length, Souter concluded, "The case for discrimination goes beyond these comparisons to include broader patterns of practice during the jury selection. The prosecution's shuffling of the venire panel, its enquiry into views on the death penalty, its questioning about minimum acceptable sentences: all indicate decisions probably based on race. Finally, the appearance of discrimination is confirmed by widely known evidence of the general policy of the Dallas County District Attorney's Office to exclude black venire members from juries at the time Miller-El's jury was selected."

The Court then addressed discrepancies in descriptions of capital punishment the prosecutor gave to most whites as opposed to the descriptions given to more than half the African-Americans. The Prosecution gave a bland, non-descriptive explanation of the State's position on the death penalty to those they considered preferred candidates, but gave a graphic description of the process, including the means of execution, to those they didn't want.

Further 94% of whites were told the minimum sentence for the crime committed, while only 12.5% of African-Americans were given this information, despite the information being relevant to one of the questions in voir dire. This allowed prosecutors to set up a "trick question" allowing them to excuse from the pool a large portion of African-Americans based on their answer to questions for which they had been given incomplete information.

"Of more importance, the defense presented evidence that the District Attorney's Office had adopted a formal policy to exclude minorities from jury service... . A manual entitled 'Jury Selection in a Criminal Case' [sometimes known as the Sparling Manual] was distributed to prosecutors. It contained an article authored by a former prosecutor (and later a judge) under the direction of his superiors in the District Attorney's Office, outlining the reasoning for excluding minorities from jury service. Although the manual was written in 1968, it remained in circulation until 1976, if not later, and was available at least to one of the prosecutors in Miller-El's trial."

The Supreme Court held the Dallas County Prosecutor's Office, in general, and the prosecutors working Miller-El's case, in particular, had engaged in practices designed to exclude African-Americans from serving on the jury. Therefore, Miller-El's Fourteenth Amendment due process rights were violated, and he was entitled to post-conviction relief (overturning the death penalty) and resentencing in his case.

Case Citation:

Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. 231 (2005)