RACISTISM!
(theguardian) - Jay Nixon, the Democratic governor of Missouri, is coming under intense pressure to stay the imminent execution of an African American man who was sentenced to death by an all-white jury in St Louis County – the jurisdiction that covers Ferguson, scene of last summer’s dramatic unrest over state-sanctioned racial discrimination.
Barring last-minute intervention by Nixon or the US supreme court, Andre Cole, 42, will be killed by lethal injection at 6pm local time on Tuesday in a case that displays disturbing signs of racial animus. All three potential black jurors were removed from the jury pool at the demand of St Louis County prosecutors, who secured a death sentence from the resulting panel of 12 white men and women.
Such controversial circumstances have provoked a flurry of 11th-hour protests, including appeals to Nixon that he use his governor’s prerogative to stop the execution. The complaints are all the more charged coming from the county of Ferguson which August erupted in prolonged clashes between protesters and police after the police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.
“This case highlights the disparate treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice system. Ferguson exposed unequal treatment by police, and the pending execution of Andre Cole exposes the same disparity from prosecutors and the courts,” said Elston McCowan of the Missouri branch of the NAACP.
A coalition of civil rights activists, African American organizations and religious leaders have written to Nixon demanding an official inquiry into what they claim is rampant and systemic racial bias within St Louis County that has put a vastly disproportionate number of black men on to death row. The investigation would ensure, the 60 signatories write, “that racial bias has not infected the death sentences imposed in St Louis County”.
The numbers speak for themselves. Eleven death row prisoners were prosecuted in St Louis County. Of those, seven or 64% are black, in stark contrast to the general population of the area which is 24% African American.
Behind those startling figures lie evidence of racial distortions in the way that juries are configured. Evidence has been presented to court in seven separate death penalty cases in Missouri in which potential black jurors were struck off for no apparent reason.
Cole was convicted in 2001 for murdering the boyfriend of his former wife. Of the three potential black jurors struck off by St Louis County prosecutors, one was removed on grounds that he was divorced – even though a white divorcee was put on the final panel. “Prosecutors were asked to explain why they had struck off the black jurors, and the reasons they gave don’t hold up very well when you read the record,” said Cole’s attorney, Joseph Luby of the Death Penalty Litigation Clinic.
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