James Garfield Broadnax v. Texas

In this capital case involving a Black defendant and two White victims, the prosecution disclosed to Petitioner’s counsel, only after state habeas proceedings had concluded, (1) a spreadsheet used by prosecutors during jury selection that tracked each qualified prospective juror by race and singled out the Black prospective jurors by marking them in bold text, and (2) a prosecutor’s notes establishing that race was the basis for striking a qualified Black juror. The prosecution struck all seven Black prospective jurors during jury selection. “Because of the risk that the factor of race may enter the criminal justice process, [this Court has] engaged in ‘unceasing efforts’ to eradicate racial prejudice from our criminal justice system,” McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, 309 (1987) (quoting Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 85 (1986)), and in particular from jury selection, see Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400, 404–10 (1991); Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 341–47 (2003) (“Miller-El I”); Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. 231, 237–40 (2005) (“Miller-El II”); Snyder v. Louisiana, 552 U.S. 472, 476–86 (2008); Foster v. Chatman, 578 U.S. 488, 499–514 (2016); Flowers v. Mississippi, 139 S. Ct. 2228, 2238–51 (2019). The newly disclosed evidence of Batson violations in Mr. Broadnax’s case demonstrates that the Court’s work is not done. Having been only recently admonished in Miller-El I and Miller-El II for a well-documented culture of racial discrimination in jury selection, Dallas prosecutors put in writing—in a document created by the State during the 2009 jury selection process that was not produced by the State to Mr. Broadnax until 2021—that race was the “only concern” with a Black prospective juror: (I)