MWS Natural
Member
Oh, definitely. It has an entire section dedicated to it:
In erecting this high standard, the Court knew full well that the standard could not be met absent an admission that a prosecutor or judge acted because of racial bias. The majority opinion openly acknowledged that long-standing rules generally bar litigants from obtaining discovery from the prosecution regarding charging patterns and motives, and that similar rules forbid introduction of evidence of evidence of jury deliberations even when a juror has chosen to make deliberations public. The very evidence that the Court demanded in McCleskey - evidence of deliberate bias in his individual case - would almost always be unavailable and/or inadmissible due to procedural rules that shield jurors and prosecutors from scrutiny. This dilemma was of little concern to the Court. It closed the courthouse doors to claims of racial bias in sentencing.
There is good reason to believe that, despite appearances, the McClesky decision was not really about the death penalty at all; rather, the Court's opinion was driven by a desire to immunize the entire criminal justice system from claims of racial bias. The best evidence in support of this vew can be found at the end of the majority opinion where the Court states that discretion plays a necessary role in the implementation of the criminal justice system, and that discrimination is an inevitable byproduct of discretion. Racial discrimination, the Court seemed to suggest, was something that simply must be tolerated in the criminal justice system, provided no one admits to racial bias.
It was patently absurd. There was also the case mentioned in the OP where they could not use statistics, Armstrong v United States, in which the Supreme Court ruled that despite 1991 out of 2000 crack cases being sent to federal court in a three year period were black - and none were white - refused to allow Armstrong's lawyers access to data that would allow them to demonstrate racial bias in the way cases were sent either to federal or state court. The Court said because he hadn't shown any white defendants who should have been sent to federal court, but were instead sent to state court, Armstrong's lawyers had no argument for discovery for the records of the prosecutor's office. In other words, as the blogger in the OP said, "the Court demands that the defendants prove the very thing they are requesting data to help them prove."
And this is the quote from the majority decision you were probably thinking of:
Taken to its logical conclusion, throws into serious question the principles that underlie our criminal justice system [...] If we accepted McCleskey's claim that racial bias has impermissibly tainted the capital sentencing decision, we could soon be faced with similar claims as to other types of penalty.
It was pretty surprising reading how the Court over the last fifty years had so thoroughly gutted the Fourth Amendment by interpretations that remove most of its practical power to protect citizens from search and seizure, and even moreso how the Court has gone about immunizing the entire criminal justice system from claims of racial bias.
Just buy it already, ev. Both!
Fuck this is depressing, why I don't even want to read books like this. I try to avoid the "Rosewood" feeling as much as possible.