WASHINGTON

SUPREME COURT DENOUNCES RACE BIAS IN JURY SELECTION

The Supreme Court warned prosecutors yesterday to use care in striking minorities from juries, siding with black murder suspects in Texas and California who contended their juries had been unfairly stacked with whites.

Justice Thomas, the only black member of the high court, voted against both suspects, including the Texas inmate whose death sentence was overturned. The court used the cases to bolster its landmark 1986 decision barring prosecutors from disqualifying potential jurors based on their race.

Justice Breyer suggested a radical change in the way juries are picked. He said that the only way to get discrimination out of jury selection may be to stop letting prosecutors and defense lawyers dismiss some potential jurors without giving a reason. That suggestion was made by the late Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice, and Justice Breyer seemed to launch a campaign for it.

The rulings, in the final three weeks of the Supreme Court’s term, came in appeals filed by indigent black inmates in Texas and California. Justice Souter, writing the 6-3 decision, said there was strong evidence of prejudice during jury selection. He noted that black jurors were questioned more aggressively about the death penalty, and the pool was “shuffled” at least twice by prosecutors, apparently to increase the chances whites would be selected. Justice Souter was joined by Justices Stevens, O’Connor, Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Breyer.

– Associated Press

LABOR FEDERATION VOTES IN FAVOR OF SWEENEY’S PLAN

Although some of the biggest unions oppose them, the AFL-CIO’s executive committee voted 17-7 yesterday to support an organizing effort and political strategy backed by the labor federation’s president, John Sweeney. The vote came amid an internal struggle over setting the course of organized labor. Mr. Sweeney and his supporters have focused on mobilizing members for political activity over the course of his 10 years at the helm of the 13 million-member labor organization of 57 unions. The 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union is threatening to bolt unless the AFL-CIO commits to a dramatic reorganization. The SEIU wants the AFL-CIO to cut its budget by more than 50% and use the savings to increase organizing by its member unions.

Mr. Sweeney put forward a plan he said would address the need to sign up new members and link the drive for growth to workers’ political power. “Without growth, we cannot sustain wins in the policy debates and political contests that determine the future for working people,” a resolution passed by the executive committee says.

Mr. Sweeney’s plan includes creating a $22.5 million strategic organizing fund. The AFL-CIO laid off 167 employees last month as part of Mr. Sweeney’s plan to increase spending on union membership drives. Other major unions opposing Mr. Sweeney’s plan as insufficient include the Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and the Laborers.

[While the United Auto Workers voted against Mr. Sweeney’s plan at a similar meeting in March, that union voted for the plan yesterday. The vote sends the proposals to a meeting of the AFL-CIO’s 57 member unions later this month.]

– Associated Press

SOUTH

JURY SELECTION BEGINS FOR REPUTED KLANSMAN IN 1964 SLAYINGS

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. – Reputed Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen watched from a wheelchair yesterday as jury selection began in his murder trial in one of most shocking crimes of the civil rights era – the 1964 slayings of three voter-registration volunteers.

The case against the 80-year-old Mr. Killen represents Mississippi’s latest attempt to deal with unfinished business from the state’s bloodstained, racist past.

In a measure of how much things have changed over the past 41 years, about a third of the jury pool was black, roughly reflecting the racial makeup of the county’s 28,700 residents. In 1964, very few blacks were registered to vote in Neshoba County, and juries were usually all-white.

The slayings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner – three young men who were helping register blacks during the “Freedom Summer” of 1964 – galvanized the civil rights movement and helped win passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The case was dramatized in the 1988 movie “Mississippi Burning.”

Mr. Killen, a part-time preacher who has been free on bail, looked straight ahead and said nothing as he was taken into the two-story, red-brick courthouse. Mr. Killen is in a wheelchair because of arthritis that was aggravated after his legs were broken in a tree-cutting accident in March. He sat silently inside the courtroom.

– Associated Press