The U.S. Supreme Court has opened the door to finally settling one of the most controversial death penalty cases in Texas history,The high court ordered an appeals court to reconsider a death sentence handed down to double killer Duane Buck, who was given the capital sentence after an 'expert witness' testified that Buc k was 'more likely to be a future danger to society because he is Black.'
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that "the unconstitutional “expert” testimony in Mr. Buck’s case appealed to a “particularly noxious strain of racial prejudice,” i.e., “that of black men as ‘violence prone.’”
The ruling means Buck will be released from Death Row and will either be resentenced to life in prison, or be ordered to have a new sentencing hearing 'untainted by racial bias.'
“Our law punishes people for what they do, not who they are. Dispensing punishment on the basis of an immutable characteristic flatly contravenes this guiding principle," Roberts wrote.
"The Supreme Court made clear that there is no place for racial bias in the American criminal justice system,” said Christina Swarns, counsel of record for Mr. Buck and Litigation Director of NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. “By acknowledging that Mr. Buck’s trial counsel’s injection of racially biased evidence into the capital sentencing proceedings was unconstitutional, the Court has reaffirmed the longstanding principle that criminal punishments – particularly the death penalty – cannot be based on immutable characteristics such as race.”
Nobody is arguing that Buck is innocent or should be released, and nobody is urging the court to drop the charges against him, or claims one of the silly procedural errors that so angers capital punishment supporters in this case occured here.
Buck was found guilty of killing his girlfriend and her friend in a fit of rage in Houston back in 1995.
But one of the two 'affirmative questions' that the jury has to answer is whether the defendant is a 'continuing threat to society,' and the testimony of the 'expert' that Buck 'was more likely to commit violent crimes in the future because of his race,' was tantamount to telling the jury that Buck would pose that 'continuing danger.'
“Enough is enough. There can be no debate that Mr. Buck’s race does not make him a greater danger to society. Furthermore, given that Mr. Buck has been a model prisoner for over twenty years, it is highly likely that in a hearing free of racial bias, jurors today would sentence him to life in prison. This ruling gives us hope that the ugliness of Mr. Buck’s tainted death sentence will soon be put behind us and he will receive a life sentence,” said Kate Black, Senior Staff Attorney at Texas Defender Service who, along with Kathryn Kase, Senior Counsel at TDS, represents Mr. Buck.
Even one of the people Buck shot and wounded that night urged the Supreme Court to order that he receive a new trial. Several prosecutors, judges, and legal associations urged the court to rule on the case.