Supreme Court reverses Texas death sentence over jury-shuffle discrimination in Miller-El v. Dretke

The Supreme Court reversed 6-3 the death sentence of Thomas Miller-El, a Black man convicted in Dallas County, Texas, finding that prosecutors had unconstitutionally excluded Black potential jurors through a technique called the "jury shuffle" and through racially disparate questioning of jurors. Justice David Souter wrote the majority, meticulously documenting how Dallas County prosecutors had used these methods for decades. Justice Stephen Breyer's concurrence argued that the Batson framework was so unworkable that peremptory strikes should be abolished entirely.