The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday effectively overturned a black man's 1987 conviction for murdering a white woman, rebuking Georgia prosecutors for unlawfully excluding black potential jurors in picking an all-white jury that condemned him to death.
The 7-1 ruling handed a major victory to Timothy Foster, who is 48 now and was 18 at the time of the 1986 killing of Queen Madge White, a 79-year-old retired schoolteacher, in Rome, Georgia. Prosecutors, however, still could seek a new trial.
Black convicts make up a disproportionately high percentage of death-row inmates in the United States. Opponents of capital punishment assert that the American criminal justice system discriminates against black defendants.