(CN) — Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented when the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a case filed by a death row inmate who claimed Texas prosecutors had unjustly excluded female jurors from his capital murder jury due to their opinions on the death penalty.
In a seven-page dissent, Sotomayor—joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Joe Biden appointee—wrote that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals neglected to perform a "significant side-by-side comparison of struck female jurors against male jurors permitted to serve" in the trial of Dillon Gage Compton, who killed correctional officer Mari Ann Johnson in 2016.
The state cited a single factor, according to the Barack Obama appointee, to explain why all but four of the twelve-member jury were women: potential jurors' reluctance to recommend the death penalty in general.
"A prosecutor can assert that he is targeting a woman because of her reluctance to carry out the death sentence. But when the prosecution fails to convict a man who has shown even more reluctance.
According to Sotomayor, "it suggests that the woman was struck based on unlawful stereotypes about women rather than on objective facts."
According to Sotomayor, the Texas appellate court considered the women's opinions on the death penalty "as a group instead of individually."
"That legal mistake concealed the clearest proof of a discriminating intent. When compared side by side, it is evident that at least one woman who was targeted by the state had more favorable opinions on the death sentence than at least one guy who was not targeted by the state, according to Sotomayor's analysis.
In 2023, Compton was already serving a 25-year sentence in the French Robertson Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice when he strangled and killed Johnson. The conviction and death sentence were upheld by the Texas appeal court.
Compton claimed that in order to guarantee a jury composed primarily of white men, the prosecutors had unfairly utilized peremptory strikes against women and minorities. However, the lower court dismissed Compton's arguments. Compton argued that his right to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment was violated by the prosecution's use of peremptory strikes based on gender, race, and ethnicity.
Thirteen of the fifteen peremptory strikes applied to women by the prosecutors.
Each juror struck from the jury "expressed more concern, hesitation, or opposition to imposing the death penalty than those venirepersons the state chose not to strike," the Texas court decided, ruling that the state had offered a gender-neutral explanation for the strikes.
Compton's attorneys contended in a petition for Supreme Court review of the case that the state had admitted white male jurors whose opinions on the death penalty were less supportive than the women kept off the jury – at least four of whom Compton said had favorable views on the death penalty.
Sotomayor noted that one female juror who expressed a strong belief in the death penalty—stating that it was “absolutely justified” and “just and necessary”—was removed from the jury, but a male potential juror who expressed the opinion that Texas applied the death penalty too frequently was not removed.
The state never contrasted the opinions of the women it struck with those of the males it did not strike, even as it justified its position on the death sentence. Therefore, it did not address Compton's comparative claim that the State had kept men who shared the same opinions about the death punishment as the women who were struck, according to Sotomayor's writing.
In a petition submitted to the high court, representatives of the Texas Special Prosecution Unit contended that the appellate court "meaningfully compare[d] the struck women."
The judge said that she would have overturned the Texas court's decision and remanded the matter for additional consideration.
According to Sotomayor, "this case illustrates the hazards of analysis by aggregate." It's possible that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was correct when it said that the majority of women who were struck had less favorable opinions about the death sentence than the majority of men who were allowed to serve. However, it crosses the line into invidious discrimination when the state gives another female prospective juror the same rationale that applies to many other female possible jurors—not because of anything she says, but because she is a woman.
Compton, a Black man, further asserted that the state had unjustly excluded the two Black potential jurors who were eligible, in addition to a Hispanic male. There were three racial groups represented on the jury: one Hispanic, one white, and ten white jurors.
Two members of the Texas Special Prosecution Unit and Compton's attorney, Jennae Swiergula of Texas Defender Service, did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Monday.
