Student Commentary by V.A. Richelle
The courts of the United States, despite sincere efforts, have been unable to exclude racial prejudice from criminal trials. As the United States Supreme Court noted in 1979:
[W]e . . . cannot deny that, 114 years after the close of the War Between the States . . . racial and other forms of discrimination still remain a fact of life, in the administration of justice as in our society as a whole. Perhaps today that discrimination takes a form more subtle than before. But it is not less real or pernicious.
In the 1906 case of Hampton v. State, the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed a murder conviction in one of the earliest appeals from a prosecutor's racially biased argument at trial. The defendant was a mulatto who, the prosecutor argued, should not only be convicted, but who “should be kicked out by the white race and spurned by the negroes.” According to the prosecutor, “in fact the mulattos were worse than negroes; . . . they were negritoes, a race hated by the white race and despised by the negroes.” Although the court reversed the conviction, it made no comment regarding the outrageous misconduct of the prosecutor in attempting to inflame the prejudice of the jurors. Rather, it simply reversed the conviction, implying that the prosecutor's actions had not been inappropriate enough to warrant comment.
Racial bias can enter the criminal proceeding at every stage—from the decision to prosecute, to the selection of jury members and the conduct of judge and prosecutor. To combat the influence of such racism, avenues must be created through which defendants can challenge the racially skewed results of these trials. However, procedural and substantive doctrines such as harmless-error analysis and limited standards of review may tie the hands of appellate courts. The courts' limited ability to review actions of the trial court and the small number of remedies available to them may preclude the reversal of verdicts colored by racial prejudice. This Note addresses these issues by focusing on the racially motivated actions of prosecutors and the appealability of these actions.
The problems defendants face in challenging prejudicial and inflammatory statements made by prosecutors during trial are illustrative of the issues defendants generally must address on appeal. In all such appeals, defendants confront procedural roadblocks, as well as the reluctance of courts to recognize more subtle forms of racism. Part II of this Note outlines three factors that play a role in mounting a successful appeal, including (1) the extent to which error has been preserved for appeal, (2) the threshold level of racial bias necessary to win reversal and retrial, and (3) the degree to which harmless-error analysis has played a role in fashioning the appropriate remedy. Part II will detail the responses of appellate courts to these individual factors.
About the Author
V.A. Richelle.
Citation
67 Tul. L. Rev. 2357 (1993)