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Two federal prosecutors handled the jury selection process at Orlando Hall's trial. Years after Orlando's trial, the U.S. Supreme Court called out one of the prosecutors by name for violating constitutional provisions meant to ensure that minorities are included on juries.

Unfortunately, that chastening came too late for Orlando Hall as the same federal prosecutor had removed all but one Black potential juror in his case a decade earlier.

Step One in the government's multi-pronged campaign to deprive Orlando Hall of a jury of his peers was to bring the case in Fort Worth (10% Black population at the time) instead of Pine Bluff, Arkansas (36% Black population at the time).

Step Two came when 100 citizens were called for jury duty in Orlando Hall's case. Only seven of them were Black. One Black potential juror was removed from the jury panel before the trial began, leaving just six Black potential jurors for consideration on the panel of 100.

The third and final step came during the three-week jury selection process. Federal prosecutors used their peremptory strikes (meaning they could strike a potential juror for almost any reason) to remove four of the five Black jury panel members who were qualified to serve.

Federal prosecutors left one Black potential juror on the panel knowing that Orlando Hall's attorneys would surely strike her because she had stated that she was a strong supporter of the death penalty.

Under the U.S. Constitution, Black citizens have a constitutional right to serve on a jury and cannot be excluded from jury service based on their race. Likewise, a Black person accused of a crime has a right to a jury of his or her peers, selected through a race-neutral process.

Orlando Hall's lawyers challenged the actions of the federal prosecutors in excluding almost every Black citizen from the jury panel.

In response, the prosecutors flat-out lied to the Court. They said that they had tried to dismiss all of the Black jurors "for cause" before using peremptory strikes. In truth, the prosecutors had only tried this strategy with half of the Black potential jurors.

The federal prosecutors claimed that they excluded one Black potential juror because she was "very hesitant in her views about the death penalty." But the government seated other jurors who said the same things about the death penalty as the excluded Black citizen said.

Prosecutors also claimed that they excluded a Black potential juror because she had two incarcerated family members. The prosecutors never asked her about this during questioning and actually allowed several non-Black jurors with incarcerated family members to sit on the jury.

The prosecutors claimed that they excluded another Black potential juror because she had previously found a defendant not guilty of robbery in a different case. But prosecutors selected a non-Black juror to sit on the jury even though they had found someone not guilty of murder.

When called out on that hypocrisy, the prosecutors reversed course and claimed that the real reason for excluding that Black potential juror was because her brother was a criminal defense attorney. But prosecutors selected a white juror who had a public defender brother.

This jury was selected, shaped really, through the lens of these prosecutors' desire to exclude every otherwise qualified Black person from serving as a juror. This is patently unconstitutional under a series of U.S. Supreme Court cases.

About ten years after Orlando Hall's racially tainted trial, one of the federal prosecutors involved was dressed down by the U.S. Supreme Court for doing the exact same thing in a different case. The Court's decision referenced this prosecutor by name multiple times.

Four years later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that this prosecutor had engaged in racial bias during jury selection in yet another case.

We should not tolerate this pervasive racial bias and prejudice in our legal system. We cannot allow our government to execute fellow citizens who were tried and sentenced through the operation of racism.

Orlando Hall was convicted of a terrible crime. Nothing said in this thread is meant to excuse or downplay that fact. But it is important to recognize that constitutional protections only have meaning and force when they apply equally to the guilty and the innocent.