Jury deliberations are ordinarily secret. But two years ago, the court made an exception for racial bias during jury deliberations, saying that rooting it out was more important
WASHINGTON — It was 1993 and a South Dakota jury was debating whether to sentence a gay man to death. Life in prison, one juror said, would be no punishment at all. Allowing the defendant, Charles Rhines, to spend his days surrounded by men would, the juror reasoned, be a kind of reward.
The jury sentenced Rhines to death and he has been on death row ever since. Over the years, he was represented by several sets of lawyers, who challenged his conviction and sentence on various grounds without success. It was not until 2015 that a new set of lawyers first tried to interview the jurors, obtaining statements from some of them in 2016.
“Racial bias implicates unique historical, constitutional and institutional concerns,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority in the 5-3 decision. In urging the Supreme Court not to hear Rhines’ case, Jason R. Ravnsborg, South Dakota’s attorney general, argued that racial bias was more serious than prejudice against gay men and lesbians.
The judge did not answer, referring the jury to his earlier instructions, and the two sides now differ about whether the note was evidence of bias. Ravnsborg wrote, using unconventional spelling, that the last question was proof that the jury was “not phased by, or even convinced of, Rhines’s homosexuality.”
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