Miller-El v. Dretke
Miller-El pleaded not guilty to a charge of capital murder committed in the course of a robbery. Once voir dire had been completed, Miller-El moved to strike the jury, arguing that the prosecution had violated his constitutional rights by excluding African-Americans through its use of peremptory challenges; ten of the eleven African-Americas eligible to serve on the jury had been struck. Miller-El was convicted and sentenced to death. While his appeal was pending, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Batson v. Kentucky, outlining three steps for determining whether jury selection was improper.
The appeals court remanded to the case for finding in light of Batson, and the trial court found that Miller-El had not satisfied the requirements of Batson. The appellate court affirmed and the Texas Supreme Court denied certiorari. Petitioner sought and was denied state habeas relief, and then sought federal habeas relief. The district court denied his petition and his request for a Certificate of Appealability (COA). The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. It held, in relevant part, (1) that it owed great deference to the state trial court's detailed findings that the prosecutor's peremptory challenges of African-American jurors were race-neutral and that Miller-El failed to present clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, and (2) that the state court's decision was not unreasonable, contrary to clearly established federal law, or debatable among jurists of reason, that courts could not resolve the issues in a different manner, and that the issue did not deserve encouragement to proceed further.
Miller-El petitioned the Supreme Court, which concluded in Miller-El v. Cockrell, that based on a "threshold examination" of the record, the federal district court's rejection of Miller-El's Batson claim was "debatable." The Court remanded the case to the Fifth Circuit to determine whether Miller-El can "demonstrate that [the] state court's finding of the absence of purposeful discrimination was incorrect by clear and convincing evidence, and that the corresponding factual determination was 'objectively unreasonable' in light of the record before the court." On remand, the Fifth Circuit addressed the merits of the jury selection claim and affirmed the decision of the district court in its denial of habeas relief to Miller-El because he has failed to show by clear and convincing evidence that the state court erred in finding no purposeful discrimination.
Question Presented:
Whether the Court of Appeals–in reinstating on remand from this Court its prior rejection of petitioner’s claim that the prosecution had
purposefully excluded African-Americans from his capital jury in violation of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986)–so contravened this Court’s decision and analysis of the
evidence in Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322 (2003), that .an exercise of this Court’s supervisory powers. under Supreme Court Rule 10(a) is required to sustain the protections
against invidious discrimination set forth in Batson and Miller-El and the safeguards against arbitrary fact-finding set forth in 28 U.S.C. ยงยง 2254(d)(2) and (e)(1).
Decisions Under Review:
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Miller-El v. Dretke
Supreme Court ruling in Miller-El v. Cockrell
