Monday’s decision by the Georgia Supreme Court making it easier for prosecutors to strike citizens from juries spurred the court’s first African-American member to remind his colleagues what it was like a few decades ago when minorities were called to jury service in Georgia.
Justice Robert Benham concurred with the result of a decision upholding the murder conviction of a black man but wrote separately to oppose the court’s disavowing prior case law on jury selection, sounding concerned that the court was forgetting why such rules were needed in the first place.
