High court passes on case of Georgia man on death row who says Black jurors were wrongly purged

ATLANTA (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to consider the case of a Black man on death row in Georgia who says his trial was unfair because the prosecutor improperly excluded Black jurors.

Warren King, 48, was convicted of murder and other crimes in the September 1994 shooting death of convenience store clerk Karen Crosby during a robbery in southeastern Georgia. At his trial, the prosecutor used strikes to eliminate 87.5% of the eligible Black jurors and only 8.8% of the eligible white jurors, all women.

A 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision established what is known as the “Batson” rule, which prohibits the exclusion of prospective jurors based on their race. King’s lawyers say the prosecutor in his case violated that rule and ranted against it when King’s trial attorneys raised concerns during jury selection that he was striking Black jurors because of their race.

“Discrimination based on race and gender must have no role in our criminal legal system and certainly not when a man’s life is at stake,” Anna Arceneaux, one of King’s lawyers, said in a statement. “The U.S. Supreme Court should have stepped up to enforce this core constitutional principle, given the glaring and abhorrent nature of the prosecutor’s discrimination in this case.”

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