[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., FLA., TENN.

[Rick Halperin]

December 12




TEXAS:

Starr: Supreme Court must correct top Texas court's fundamental error



The job of a judge is to follow the law. If we are to be, as Chief Justice John 
Marshall wrote, “a government of laws, and not of men,” the lower courts must 
carefully apply the precedent of the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the top 
criminal court in Texas is not following this foundational constitutional 
principle in a matter of life and death.

Last year, in a case involving a death row prisoner named Bobby Moore, the U.S. 
Supreme Court held that Texas’ framework for determining whether a capital 
defendant had an intellectual disability — and was therefore exempt from 
execution — violated the Eighth Amendment. The rejected Texas criteria had in 
some circles become known as “the Lennie standard” because it invited the 
courts to compare the defendant with the fictional character Lennie Small in 
“Of Mice and Men” — a giant man with the mind of a child.

With respect to Moore, the Supreme Court ruled that the Texas Court of Criminal 
Appeals wrongly relied on non-clinical criteria about intellectual disability 
to uphold his death sentence. 3 justices dissented from the court’s reversal. 
But as all justices agree, the Supreme Court’s majority decision is the law of 
the land. And all justices unanimously agreed that Texas’ use of lay 
stereotypes was erroneous and unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court’s majority opinion emphasized that, as a 13 year old, Moore 
lacked a basic understanding of the days of the week, the months of the year, 
telling time, the seasons and the concept that subtraction is the reverse of 
addition. Stressing that Moore’s serious mental and social difficulties were 
clear from early childhood, the court highlighted what it called “the 
considerable objective evidence of Moore’s adaptive deficits.” The majority 
also held that Moore’s IQ is well within the range of intellectual disability, 
an issue no longer in dispute. As is customary, the Supreme Court then sent the 
case back to the Texas court for further proceedings.

If the system were working as it should, Moore’s case would have been a routine 
matter of the Texas court applying the Supreme Court’s decision and current 
medical standards as directed and prohibiting Moore’s execution.

Even the prosecutors, who had obtained the death penalty against Moore, agreed 
in a formal filing to the Texas court that, in light of the controlling medical 
and legal standards, Moore is intellectually disabled and should not be 
executed.

Yet in a stark conflict with black letter law, the state appellate court again 
ruled that Moore is not intellectually disabled and set him on course for 
execution. The decision made reference to the Supreme Court’s ruling, but for 
the second time relied on lay stereotypes and non-clinical criteria despite the 
Supreme Court’s explicit instructions.

While I have no doubt about the good faith of the esteemed judges in Texas, 
their decision deviates sharply from the Supreme Court’s prior decision. The 
Supreme Court justices should again accept review of Moore’s case and summarily 
reverse this latest ruling. The Texas court, in reaching its closely divided 
decision, rejected the consensus of the highest court in the country, the state 
trial judge who held the evidentiary hearing and all parties and amici before 
the court — including the prosecutors, prominent Texans concerned with the rule 
of law and leading medical organizations.

Reasonable minds can differ about the death penalty. Some urging the Supreme 
Court to take up Moore’s case again support capital punishment, and some oppose 
it. But these citizens supporting Moore, including leading conservatives, are 
committed to upholding the Constitution, which established “one Supreme Court.” 
In giving the court the last word, the framers intended that the Constitution 
would be applied consistently, without exceptions and regardless of the status 
of a particular litigant.

I am not an abolitionist on the death penalty. I favor it in appropriate cases. 
But I also believe we must vigilantly observe the constitutional constraints on 
this ultimate sentence. In our constitutional system, courts must carefully 
adhere to Supreme Court decisions on all issues — especially on this vitally 
important subject of life and death.

In this instance, a narrow majority of Texas judges may have believed the 
Supreme Court was wrong about Moore. But this does not matter, as I know from 
my own experience as an appellate judge. The state judges had an inviolable 
duty to ensure its proceedings were consistent with the court’s decision. As 
then-U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Judge Brett 
Kavanaugh put it: “... It is essential that we follow both the words and the 
music of Supreme Court decisions.”

For our system to work, the Supreme Court must make sure that its rulings are 
respected and faithfully applied.

In this case, I hope the Supreme Court will act to correct the Texas court’s 
fundamental error, especially since Moore faces the most extreme punishment our 
government can impose.

Ignoring this departure from binding authority would be inimical to our bedrock 
constitutional principles.

(source: Opinion; Kenneth W. Starr, former chancellor and president of Baylor 
University, served as U.S. solicitor general from 1989 to 1993 and U.S. Circuit 
judge for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1983 to 1989----Longview 
News-Journal)








NORTH CAROLINA:

Slaying victim was 7 months pregnant, suspect could face death



The woman who was fatally shot last in week in a mobile home off Crystal 
Springs Road was 7 months pregnant, District Attorney Billy West said Monday 
during a 1st-appearance hearing for the man charged in her death.

Markez Jaquan Mcgriff, 21, of the 2600 block of McArthur Landing Circle, is 
charged with 1st-degree murder in the death of Thailia Christina Thomas and, if 
convicted, could be sentenced to death or life in prison, District Court Judge 
Cheri Siler-Mack told him.

West is waiting on medical tests to determine whether a charge will be filed in 
the death of the unborn child.

“If, after the medical examination, we can legally charge for the fetus, we 
intend to,” West said. “We will not make a decision on the death penalty until 
the investigation is complete and we have all the information.”

Some of Mcgriff’s family members, sitting on one side of the small courtroom in 
the Cumberland County Detention Center, cried during the brief hearing.

His mother, Carolyn Johnson, appeared stunned afterward and said she didn’t 
know what was happening nor how her son knew Thomas.

“It’s just too much,” she said as she began to cry.

Thomas, 26, was killed Dec. 5 after investigators say Mcgriff came into her 
residence in the 2900 block of Spur Avenue in the Buckhead Farms mobile home 
park where she and two other women were living.

One of the women, Inda Davis, 33, was injured in the shooting that happened 
about 3:15 p.m. Davis was treated at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center. Mcgriff 
is charged with attempted 1st-degree murder in Davis’ shooting.

At the hearing, Mcgriff, flanked by Fayetteville lawyer David Smith, showed 
little emotion.

Mcgriff came to the residence that night to visit Thomas, West said.

“He was invited into the residence. This wasn’t a random act,” he said. “The 
investigation shows he was allowed into the home.”

West said investigators are still trying to determine the nature of Mcgriff’s 
and Thomas’ relationship.

West said it’s not known why the shooting happened.

Mcgriff has no pending charges in North Carolina District or Superior Courts, 
according to a search at the state Administrative Office of the Courts, and 
there is no record of any convictions in the state.

West said investigators found a pending misdemeanor charge, but confirmed that 
Mcgriff has no prior record in North Carolina.

Mcgriff was taken into custody Sunday night after Fayetteville police stopped a 
white Ford-F150 pickup truck matching the description of the vehicle 
investigators were seeking in the homicide.

The officer detained Mcgriff until Sheriff’s Office investigators arrived.

(source: Fayetteville Observer)








FLORIDA----impending execution

Will change to ‘Savings Clause’ save Florida death-row inmate?----Without a 
stay from the Florida Supreme Court, Jose Antonio Jimenez is scheduled to be 
executed 6 p.m. Thursday at Florida State Prison.



With an execution looming Thursday, attorneys for death row inmate Jose Antonio 
Jimenez say he should be spared from lethal injection because of a 
constitutional amendment passed last month by Florida voters.

Jimenez’s attorneys late Monday filed a petition at the Florida Supreme Court 
seeking a stay of execution for Jimenez, who was convicted in the 1992 murder 
of a 63-year-old woman in Miami-Dade County.

The Supreme Court has rejected earlier appeals from Jimenez, but his attorneys 
contend that a relatively non-controversial constitutional amendment approved 
in the Nov. 6 election should justify tossing out his death sentence — an 
argument that Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office disputes. Without a stay, 
Jimenez is scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. Thursday at Florida State Prison.

The arguments center on part of Amendment 11, which was approved by 62 % of 
voters. That part changed what is known as the “Savings Clause” of the Florida 
Constitution, a more than century-old provision dealing with how revisions in 
criminal laws should be applied to older crimes.

The Savings Clause historically has required that criminal laws in effect at 
the time crimes are committed govern the sentences that are imposed. But 
Amendment 11, which was placed on the ballot by the Constitution Revision 
Commission, included a change in the clause. It allowed revisions to criminal 
laws to affect sentences for older crimes.

Jimenez’s attorneys contend in court documents that the amendment is important 
in his case because of changes in Florida’s death-penalty sentencing laws in 
2017. The sentencing laws had to be rewritten because of a 2016 U.S. Supreme 
Court decision that said the state’s death-penalty sentencing structure was 
unconstitutional because it gave too much power to judges, instead of juries.

With the passage of Amendment 11, Jimenez’s attorneys argue the revised laws 
should be applied to his case — and that they should spare him from execution. 
In part, the revised laws require juries to unanimously find at least one 
“aggravating” factor to help justify a death sentence, a tougher standard for 
prosecutors than was in place when Jimenez was sentenced to death.

“The demise of the Savings Clause with the voters’ approval of Amendment 11 has 
made the will of the people clear,” the motion for a stay said. “There should 
no longer be an obstacle to applying the statutory changes retrospectively in 
order to insure that defendants are treated equally across time. Statutory 
amendments enacted to reduce unduly harsh punishment or to require the state to 
prove more in order to justify a particular sentence are meant to apply 
retrospectively as shown by the approval of Amendment 11 and what the voters 
were told the benefits of the amendment were.”

But Bondi’s office in a filing Friday blasted the arguments about the effects 
of Amendment 11 on the Jimenez case. In part, the state’s attorneys said 
Amendment 11 gave discretion to lawmakers about retroactively applying criminal 
laws to old crimes and that statements about the intent of voters is “rank 
speculation."

“Importantly, the changes in the Constitution brought about with the passage of 
Amendment 11 will not go into effect until January 8, 2019. Consequently, this 
issue is not ripe and cannot apply to Jimenez since his execution is set for 
December 13, 2018. This (Supreme) Court should deny the petition on this ground 
alone,” Bondi’s office said in the brief. “Even if this court were to consider 
this future deletion to (the section of the Constitution that includes the 
Savings Clause) to be relevant to Jimenez in some way, the deletion alone does 
not instantaneously make the 2017 change in the amended statute retroactive to 
Jimenez’s case."

It was not immediately clear Tuesday when the Supreme Court might rule on the 
motion for a stay.

Jimenez, now 55, was convicted of killing Phyllis Minas during a burglary. 
Neighbors tried to enter the home through an unlocked front door after hearing 
Minas’ cries, but Jimenez slammed the door shut, locked it and fled by going 
onto a bedroom balcony, according to court documents.

(source: The Gainesville Sun)

*****************

Constitutional Amendment Spurs Call For Stay Of Execution



A death row inmate is hoping for a last-moment reprieve.

With an execution looming Thursday, attorneys for Jose Antonio Jimenez say he 
should be spared from lethal injection because of a constitutional amendment 
passed last month by Florida voters.

Jimenez’s attorneys late Monday filed a petition at the Florida Supreme Court 
seeking a stay of execution for Jimenez, who was convicted in the 1992 murder 
of a 63-year-old woman in Miami-Dade County.

The Supreme Court has rejected earlier appeals from Jimenez, but his attorneys 
contend that a relatively non-controversial constitutional amendment approved 
in the Nov. 6 election should justify tossing out his death sentence — an 
argument that Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office disputes. Without a stay, 
Jimenez is scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. Thursday at Florida State Prison.

The arguments center on part of Amendment 11, which was approved by 62 % of 
voters. That part changed what is known as the “Savings Clause” of the Florida 
Constitution, a more than century-old provision dealing with how revisions in 
criminal laws should be applied to older crimes.

The Savings Clause historically has required that criminal laws in effect at 
the time crimes are committed govern the sentences that are imposed. But 
Amendment 11, which was placed on the ballot by the Constitution Revision 
Commission, included a change in the clause. It allowed revisions to criminal 
laws to affect sentences for older crimes.

Jimenez’s attorneys contend in court documents that the amendment is important 
in his case because of changes in Florida’s death-penalty sentencing laws in 
2017. The sentencing laws had to be rewritten because of a 2016 U.S. Supreme 
Court decision that said the state’s death-penalty sentencing structure was 
unconstitutional because it gave too much power to judges, instead of juries.

With the passage of Amendment 11, Jimenez’s attorneys argue the revised laws 
should be applied to his case — and that they should spare him from execution. 
In part, the revised laws require juries to unanimously find at least 1 
“aggravating” factor to help justify a death sentence, a tougher standard for 
prosecutors than was in place when Jimenez was sentenced to death.

“The demise of the Savings Clause with the voters’ approval of Amendment 11 has 
made the will of the people clear,” the motion for a stay said. “There should 
no longer be an obstacle to applying the statutory changes retrospectively in 
order to insure that defendants are treated equally across time. Statutory 
amendments enacted to reduce unduly harsh punishment or to require the state to 
prove more in order to justify a particular sentence are meant to apply 
retrospectively as shown by the approval of Amendment 11 and what the voters 
were told the benefits of the amendment were.”

But Bondi’s office in a filing Friday blasted the arguments about the effects 
of Amendment 11 on the Jimenez case. In part, the state’s attorneys said 
Amendment 11 gave discretion to lawmakers about retroactively applying criminal 
laws to old crimes and that statements about the intent of voters is “rank 
speculation.”

“Importantly, the changes in the Constitution brought about with the passage of 
Amendment 11 will not go into effect until January 8, 2019. Consequently, this 
issue is not ripe and cannot apply to Jimenez since his execution is set for 
December 13, 2018. This (Supreme) Court should deny the petition on this ground 
alone,” Bondi’s office said in the brief. “Even if this court were to consider 
this future deletion to (the section of the Constitution that includes the 
Savings Clause) to be relevant to Jimenez in some way, the deletion alone does 
not instantaneously make the 2017 change in the amended statute retroactive to 
Jimenez’s case.”

It was not immediately clear Tuesday when the Supreme Court might rule on the 
motion for a stay.

Jimenez, now 55, was convicted of killing Phyllis Minas during a burglary. 
Neighbors tried to enter the home through an unlocked front door after hearing 
Minas’ cries, but Jimenez slammed the door shut, locked it and fled by going 
onto a bedroom balcony, according to court documents.

(source: CBS News)

****************************

‘He was utterly merciless’: Burglar who fatally stabbed Miami court clerk faces 
execution



Phyliss Minas, a 63-year-old court clerk who lived alone with her cats, worked 
in relative anonymity at the Miami-Dade criminal courthouse. She was keenly 
aware of the violent stories that filled the courthouse — as part of her job, 
she mailed hearing notices to the lawyers who represented accused criminals.

She told coworkers she always shopped before dark and carried little cash to 
avoid becoming a target for muggers. “She was so careful about her life,” her 
supervisor once said.

Minas became a victim, not in public but in her own apartment in North Miami, 
in 1992. A drug-addicted junkie neighbor named Jose Antonio Jimenez broke into 
her house, then stabbed her to death so viciously that jurors showed him no 
mercy — they voted unanimously to send him to Florida’s death row.

26 years after Minas was murdered, Jimenez is scheduled to be executed Thursday 
evening at Florida State Prison in Stark. In a case that drew little media 
attention then and over the years, Minas’ story has not been forgotten by her 
few remaining relatives and those who worked to put Jimenez behind bars.

“It was a very gruesome crime. He was utterly merciless,” said Miami lawyer 
Michael R. Band, who convicted Jimenez as a prosecutor in 1994. “There was no 
need to harm her. He could have walked out. She wasn’t a threat to him in any 
fashion.”

Jimenez, 55, was also convicted separately of an earlier murder — the 1990 
strangulation killing of a woman found dead inside her Miami Beach apartment. 
He pleaded guilty and got 17 years for that killing.

Gov. Rick Scott originally scheduled Jimenez’s execution for July 18, but the 
Florida Supreme Court issued a stay as his defense lawyers claimed that North 
Miami hadn’t turned over key police records. The high court rejected the appeal 
in October, paving the way for Thursday’s execution by lethal injection.

Jimenez is still appealing his execution to the Florida Supreme Court, a 
federal court and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Among his chief arguments: that voters in November authorized a key change in 
state law that means Jimenez should be allowed a new sentencing hearing under 
Florida’s current death penalty law, not the one in existence in 1992 when the 
murder happened.

Unlike the early 1990s, jurors today must be unanimous in meting out the death 
penalty, and must also prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the aggravating 
circumstances of the murder — the cruel nature of the killing, plus his 
criminal background and the fact that it happened during a burglary — outweigh 
the “mitigating” factors. At trial, his defense lawyers argued that Jimenez 
should be spared the death penalty because of a crushing drug problem that had 
turned his life into chaos.

“I believe the execution is wrong. I believe the execution is 
unconstitutional,” his lawyer, Martin McClain, said on Tuesday.

Minas worked as a clerk for 15 years and her savage killing stunned the 
criminal courthouse. Fellow clerks, on lunch breaks at the building, watched 
the weeklong trial.

“We deal with these things daily,” Frank Sherod, boss of the criminal clerk 
section, told the Miami Herald at the time. “It’s a number until you learned it 
was one of us. Everyone up here is devastated about this.”

Minas was murdered on Oct. 2, 1992, inside Apt. 207 at a building on the 13700 
block of Northeast Sixth Avenue.

Detectives believe Jimenez, an upstairs neighbor, broke into the apartment 
looking to burglarize the place. Minas surprised him. Evidence showed that 
Jimenez beat the woman repeatedly, then stabbed her 8 times — twice plunging a 
knife into her heart.

“Ms. Minas was alive and conscious during the entire attack,” then Miami-Dade 
Circuit Judge Leslie Rothenberg said at sentencing.

At the 1994 trial, neighbors testified that they heard thuds and Minas yell 
out: “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” Two neighbors said they tried to opened the 
door, which the killer slammed shut.

Another neighbor, Clifford Merriweather, was standing by the street and said he 
saw Jimenez scaling down the building from a balcony adjacent to the Minas 
apartment. “He dropped and started walking toward me,” Merriweather testified. 
“His eyes were wider than a Kennedy 50-cent piece.”

Jimenez’s fingerprint was also found on the interior of Minas’ front door.

Jurors deliberated less than 2 hours in convicting Jimenez. At a sentencing 
hearing a couple months later, his defense lawyers depicted him as a 
high-school dropout controlled by his addiction to drugs.

Jimenez had dropped out of 2 rehab programs for his cocaine appetite, which 
cost him as much as $300 a day. His lawyers claimed that he smoked $200 worth 
of crack cocaine on the day of the murder.

But Judge Rothenberg, who is now on the Third District Court of Appeals, noted 
that Jimenez knew what he was doing.

“He still had the presence of mind to take the murder weapon with him and to 
conceal it from view when he dropped from the balcony,” the judge said before 
sentencing him to death.

(source: Miami Herald)

***********************

Death penalty should be abolished in Florida



We are moving through a season marked by hope, peace, joy and love. But in 
Florida, we are also moving closer to executing another human being.

Gov. Rick Scott has scheduled inmate Jose Antonio Jimenez to be executed 
Thursday for the 1992 killing of Phyllis Minas; it will be the 28th execution 
carried out during Scott’s 8 years of leadership (the most by any governor 
since the death penalty was reinstated more than 40 years ago).

It was Gandhi who said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

It seems our obsession with an eye for an eye has already made us blind.

We have chosen not to see:

• The flaws in our criminal justice system.

• The fact that death penalty cases are filled with deep racial and 
socioeconomic biases.

• The reality that death penalty cases often ignore critical mitigating 
evidence: low IQ, abuse, mental illness, etc.

We have also chosen not to see that murdering those who murder is not healing 
anyone or anything.

It is not healing the deep pain and suffering of the families of murder victims 
— the lengthy appeals process associated with death penalty cases drags 
grieving families in and out of court for an average of 15 ½ years.

That is 15 years of listening, replaying and reliving the murders of their 
loved ones.

Our obsession with an eye for an eye has made us blind, but it’s not too late 
to recover our vision.

It’s not too late for us to turn toward restorative justice.

It’s not too late for us to pursue just solutions that bring healing rather 
than more violence.

It’s not too late for us to embrace another way forward that is more healing; a 
way forward that looks less like revenge — and more like the hope, peace, joy 
and love we long to weave into the fabric of our society.

It’s time to end the death penalty in Florida.

The Rev. Susan Rogers, Jacksonville

(source: Letter to the Editor, Florida Times-Union)








TENNESSEE:

The Conversation We're Not Yet Having About Tennessee's Death Penalty----Recent 
executions of white men have highlighted numerous flaws with capital punishment 
— but it's also racist



After last week's electrocution of David Earl Miller, Tennessee's death penalty 
comes to a pause.

The next prisoner set to die in the state is Donnie Johnson, whose execution is 
scheduled for May 16, 2019. After that, 3 more men are set to be executed in 
2019, with 2 more following them in 2020.

The cases of the 3 men put to death by the state in the past 4 months — Billy 
Ray Irick by lethal injection, and Edmund Zagorski and Miller by electrocution 
— highlighted numerous flaws with the death penalty in Tennessee. Irick and 
Miller both had histories of severe mental illness, while Zagorski's case 
illustrated the arbitrary nature of the sentence (and belied the idea that 
death row is home to unrepentant monsters). But because all 3 men were white, 
the revival of the death penalty in Tennessee has not yet prompted a discussion 
of one of its other major problems — it's racist.

That's not breaking or particularly surprising news, of course. The criminal 
justice system as a whole is thoroughly infected with racial bias — why would 
its most severe penalty be any different?

Still, the numbers are stark.

There are currently 58 prisoners remaining on Tennessee's death row, and 28 of 
them are black. That's 48 % in a state with a population that is just 17 % 
black. Death sentences have been declining nationally, but the disparity 
remains. In Tennessee, 17 men have received a death sentence since the year 
2000 — 11 of them are black.

But the death penalty isn't just biased against African-American defendants. 
Studies have consistently found racial disparities when it comes to the race of 
the victim as well.

This section from an American Bar Association assessment of Tennessee's death 
penalty published in 2007 summarizes some of those findings:

Former Tennessee Supreme Court Chief Justice Birch also has voiced concerns 
that racial bias may be permeating the death penalty process in Tennessee. In 
State v. Chalmers, Justice Birch noted that “numerous studies have indicated 
that racial bias may play a significant role in determining which defendants 
receive the death penalty.” A recent study that reviewed capital sentencing in 
Tennessee from 1981 to 2000 and was conducted as part of this ABA Tennessee 
Death Penalty Assessment Report has given credence to Justice Birch’s concerns. 
The study concluded that “those who kill whites are more likely to be sentenced 
to death than those who kill blacks.” In addition to the race of victims and 
suspects in homicide cases, the study took account of legally relevant factors 
that are legitimately related to the imposition of the death penalty, namely 2 
prevalent aggravating factors in death penalty sentencing: whether the crime 
took the life of more than 1 victim; and whether the homicide involved 
accompanying felonies, such as rape or robbery. The study found that 
individuals who killed whites were 4.75 times more likely to receive the death 
penalty than those who killed blacks in the absence of these aggravating 
factors. When at least one of these aggravating factors was present, 
individuals who killed whites were 3.15 times more likely to be sentenced to 
death than individuals who killed blacks.

In their report "Tennessee's Death Penalty Lottery" — published earlier this 
year in the Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy — attorneys Bradley MacLean and 
H.E. Miller Jr. note the considerable role that discretion plays in death 
penalty cases.

"The exercise of discretion permeates a capital case — from the time of arrest 
through the charging decision, the district attorney's decision to seek the 
death penalty, innumerable decisions by all of the parties and the judiciary 
throughout the proceedings, and the ultimate jury decision of life versus 
death," they write. "Where there is discretion, there is room for implicit 
bias."

As they note, district attorneys wield significant power, and discretion. And 
in Tennessee, all 31 district attorneys general are white. If you have doubts 
about whether that matters — or whether implicit, and even explicit, racial 
bias is ever at play in prosecutions in Tennessee — take it from the 
prosecutors themselves. In a November 2015 letter to the Tennessee District 
Attorneys General Conference — which is cited in court filings by attorneys for 
Abu-Ali Abdur'rahman, a black man whose execution has been set for April 9, 
2020 — Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk highlights and disavows 
comments made by a former Nashville prosecutor at an annual conference.

The comments were made by Rutherford County Assistant District Attorney, and 
former Nashville ADA John Zimmerman. Funk writes:

The first of these inappropriate comments was when he said that as an ADA in 
Nashville, he would strike jurors with a 37215 area code, an affluent part of 
town, if the if the case involved people from "the inner city" because "in 
Nashville, rich people don't care about what happens in East Nashville." While 
the racial implications in the previous comment were inferential, his next 
statements were blatant advice to use race in jury selection. Specifically, Mr. 
Zimmerman described prosecuting a conspiracy case with all Hispanic defendants. 
He stated he wanted an all African-American jury because "all Blacks hate 
Mexicans."

Abdur'rahman's attorneys write: "If in today's race-conscious world, when 
prosecutors are under public scrutiny, Mr. Zimmermann was willing to describe 
and advocate for racist practices in a CLE presentation to fellow prosecutors, 
then it is fair to infer that Mr. Zimmermann was willing to use race in jury 
selection at the time of Mr. Abdur'Rahman's trial."

Tennessee is not alone, of course, when it comes to racial bias in the death 
penalty. The Washington Supreme Court struck down that state's death penalty 
earlier this year because the court found it to be "arbitrary and racially 
biased."

(source: Nashville Scene)