Timothy Foster appeal ruling may come soon
With just eight justices currently sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, several defendants still await a ruling, including convicted murderer Timothy Foster.
In 1986, Timothy Tyrone Foster murdered a retired fourth-grade Johnson Elementary School teacher, Queen White, during a burglary. He was arrested a month after the incident, with the police finding the stolen items in his home.
He later confessed to the crime. Court records show that White’s jaw was broken, and she had a severe gash on the top of her head. Before she was strangled to death, she had been molested.
An all-white jury convicted the 18-year-old black man of murder and burglary, and sentenced him to death.
On Nov. 2, 2015, Foster’s appeal reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The question was whether or not then-Floyd County District Attorney Steve Lanier improperly excluded potential black jurors from the death penalty trial in 1987.
“Mr. Foster’s case is still pending in the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Foster’s attorney, Stephen Bright with the Southern Center for Human Rights.
The court usually ends its term in June and could hand down a decision any day now, Bright said.
“The court will issue decisions again on Monday and from time to time after that until all the cases have been decided,” Bright said. “Unfortunately, the court provides no warning with regard to when it will decide a case, but we can expect the case to be decided in the next six weeks.”
In April 1986, the Supreme Court ruled in Batson v. Kentucky that it is unconstitutional to remove a potential juror because of race.
Prosecutors’ notes discovered 19 years after Foster’s trial show the names of each potential black juror highlighted in green and the word “black” circled next to the race question on the questionnaires.
The court is obviously split evenly over its general philosophy, according to Rome attorney Bob Brinson, who has argued before the nation’s highest court.
He doesn’t think an even number of judges will affect the effort of the court. Additionally, he doesn’t think it will cause a delay or a reversal in previous rulings on the Foster case.
Foster’s isn’t the only case that the eight justices may have trouble with.
The eight Supreme Court justices say they’ll take care of business until a new ninth justice joins them. Their actions say otherwise.
Monday’s unsigned, unanimous decision returning a high-profile dispute over access to birth control to lower courts was the latest example of the ideologically split court’s struggle to get its work done with an even number of justices since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February.
The decision averted a 4-4 tie, which would have left different rules in place in different parts of the country concerning the availability of cost-free birth control for women who work for faith-affiliated groups.
But the outcome was itself inconclusive and suggested that the justices could not form a majority to issue a significant ruling that would have settled the issue the court took the case to resolve.
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