Today’s Supreme Court Ruling Signals Sensitivity to Racism

Duane Buck was convicted of the 1995 murders of a former girlfriend and one of her friends. Under Texas law, the state can impose a death sentence only if prosecutors can show the defendant poses a future danger to society. At trial, evidence was admitted from a psychologist who testified that Buck’s race made him a danger to society. Specifically, the prosecutor asked: “You have determined that…the race factor, black, increases the future dangerousness for various complicated reasons; is that correct?”  Dr. Quijano replied, “Yes.”

Today, on a remarkable 6-2 vote, the Supreme Court vacated the sentence.

What’s notable is that a conservative justice, Chief Justice John Roberts, authored the decision, where he said that the psychologist’s report “said, in effect, that the color of Buck’s skin made him more deserving of execution.”

Roberts continued: “Our law punishes people for what they do, not who they are,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “Dispensing punishment on the basis of an immutable characteristic flatly contravenes this guiding principle.” He added that this testimony “appealed to a powerful racial stereotype — that of black men as ‘violence prone.’”

The 6-2 vote is also remarkable. Justices are human and react to social and political change, albeit in a much slower, deliberate and cautious manner. But the unmistakable uptick in open racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and nativism may be causing two Republican justices— Roberts and Kennedy— to position themselves as centrists, in alignment with the liberal wing of the Court.
Today's ruling means that Buck will likely be sentenced to life in prison.
Photo Credit: Popularis