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Tony Egbuna Ford |
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Petition on his case |
Petizione sul suo caso |
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CLAIM EIGHT TRIAL COUNSEL FAILED TO PROVIDE EFFECTIVE ASSISTANCE DURING VOIR DIRE BY FAILING TO QUESTION PROSPECTIVE JURORS ABOUT RACIAL BIAS.
A. The Basis for the Claim In Turner v. Murray, 476 U.S. 28, 36-37 (1986), the Supreme Court held that "a capital defendant accused of an interracial crime is entitled to have prospective jurors informed of the race of the victim and questioned on the issue of racial bias." The reason for this decision was twofold: the unique range of discretion allowed juries in capital sentencing proceedings, and the unique capacity of capital murder prosecutions to stir up racial prejudice. As the Court explained, Because of the range of discretion entrusted to a jury in a capital sentencing hearing, there is a unique opportunity for racial prejudice to operate but remain undetected. On the facts of this case, a juror who believes that blacks are violence prone or morally inferior might well be influenced by that belief in deciding whether petitioner's crime involved the aggravating factors specified under Virginia law. . . . More subtle, less consciously held racial attitudes could also influence a juror's decision in this case. Fear of blacks, which could easily be stirred up by the violent facts of petitioner's crime, might incline a juror to favor the death penalty.
Id. at 35. The crime prosecuted against Mr. Ford had as much the capacity to stir up "[f]ear of blacks" as the crime in Turner. An unsuspecting, innocent, law-abiding family tending to their own affairs in their own home was suddenly the victim of a brutal, unprovoked home invasion by two young black men. The stereotype of young black men as predators could easily have been evoked by these facts alone. Bars over doors and windows in many urban American neighborhoods bespeak the power of this fear. Notwithstanding the right to voir dire on racial prejudice provided by Turner in such a case, and the clear danger that the facts of the crime would evoke racial prejudice, defense counsel failed to conduct any voir dire on this issue. Failure to do so was unreasonable and prejudicial. As if to confirm the Supreme Court's worst fears, the prosecution indeed sought to stir up feelings of racial bias in Mr. Ford's sentencing proceeding. In her closing penalty phase argument, the prosecutor argued twice in a manner that could easily have evoked racial feelings. First she argued, He's demonstrated a wanton disregard for human life. It was a random act of violence that could have happened to any one of you.
That defendant sitting right there is your worst nightmare. He's why you sit behind double-locked dead-bolt doors. [SF Vol. X p. 124]. Defense counsel's objection was sustained but the damage was done, only to be reinvigorated by the prosecutor's subsequent remark moments later: But just as Mr. Garney said I was going to try and play on your emotions and try to get you fired up and try to get you into a retribution mode, he's trying to get you to back off of that and make you feel guilty for something that horrid creature did.
[SF Vol. X p. 130]. Again, the objection was sustained but the evocation of prejudice could not necessarily be quelled by the court's instruction to disregard. Against this backdrop, it is plain that racial prejudice was a likely factor in this trial, just as the Supreme Court predicted it would be in such trials. It was for this reason that the Court held as it did in Turner. The one safeguard that the Court has created against the "unique opportunity for racial prejudice to operate but remain undetected," Turner, 476 U.S. at 35, however, was foregone by counsel. B. State Court Proceedings This claim was presented among the claims included within Claim 6 in the Amended Original Application for Writ of Habeas Corpus in the state courts. The state courts rejected the claim on the merits.
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