U.S. Attorney Candidates Advance

The Federal Nominating Commission for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, which I chair, has forwarded four names to Senators Kohl and Feingold for further consideration as the next United States Attorney.  The four candidates include three current federal prosecutors, Richard Frohling, Mel Johnson, and James Santelle, as well as Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Maxine White, who is a former federal prosecutor.  The Commission is required to supply a list of four to six qualified candidates to the Senators, and does not rank the candidates on that list.

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Seventh Circuit Week in Review: Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection and Improper Closing Arguments

The Seventh Circuit had three new opinions in criminal cases last week.  The most interesting was United States v. McMath (No. 08-2316), which featured the Seventh Circuit’s most extended discussion to date of Snyder v. Louisana, 128 S. Ct. 1203 (2008).  In my view, the Supreme Court’s decision in Snyder represented a real break-through in the Court’s on-again/off-again efforts to eliminate racial bias from the jury-selection process.  In McMath (which was, coincidentally, decided on the exact one-year anniversary of Snyder), the Seventh Circuit seemed to recognize the significance of Snyder and awarded the defendant a remand for further consideration of the racial bias issue in the district court.  McMath also included an interesting discussion of questionable closing arguments made by the prosecutor.

McMath’s jury-selection claim centered on alleged racial bias in the prosecutor’s use of peremptory strikes.  In Batson v. Kentucky, of course, the Supreme Court made clear that prosecutors are prohibited from removing potential jurors from a case on account of their race.  Here are the relevant facts from McMath:

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The Eyes Have It

During my freshman year at Boston University, I was engaged to a girl from just outside of Houston. It didn’t work out in the end, but it was a good relationship, and so I’ve tended to refrain from joining in on the jokes people like to make about Texans, particularly as pertains to their creative (i.e., absent) approach toward the rights of criminal defendants. But even I can’t resist taking some jabs at the Texas Supreme Court for this decision.

To summarize: Andre Thomas killed his wife, 4-year old son, and 13-month-old niece. He then (and I honestly can’t phrase this better than the article did)

walked into the Sherman Police Department and told a dispatcher he had murdered the three, then told officers he put his victims’ hearts in his pocket, left their apartment, took them home, put the organs in a plastic bag and threw them in the trash. He said G-d had told him to commit the killings.

This would probably be enough to give anyone pause, but it gets better (or worse, depending on how you look at it).

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