Read this case and write the essay from the case
Analyze the case and determine how the ethical egoism perspective supports or condemns the conduct.
CASE
In Dismissal of Black Jurors Leads to Appeal by Death Row Inmate.
Thomas Miller-El is an African American charged with shooting two white hotel clerks during a robbery in 1985. One of the hotel clerks died, and Miller-El, age 50, is due to be executed by the State of Texas on February 21. He has asked the Texas Board of Pardons to commute his sentence
and has appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court on the ground that the jury that convicted him was chosen using racial discriminatory standards that have been applied by the Dallas County district attorney’s office in many cases. The district attorney’s office opposes the appeal, arguing that there is no evidence of any racial discrimination. The jury in the trial comprised nine whites, one Filipino, one Hispanic, and one African American.
Three other African Americans were excluded from the jury by prosecutors, as were seven of eight other African Americans interviewed as prospective jurors. Racial discrimination in jury selection is prohibited by the Constitution, and until 1986, to establish race discrimination, an accused had to meet a heavy burden of proof, because he or she had to show a pattern of discrimination. In 1986, in Batson v. Kentucky, the U.S. Supreme
Court lowered the standard, determining that if the accused was able to show that the prosecution appeared to be using its peremptory challenges to jurors to exclude minorities, the trial judge could call for an explanation.
Miller-El was convicted and sentenced 1 month before the Batson ruling, but the decision applies to his case retroactively. To date, both state and federal courts have upheld his death sentence, determining that no racial discrimination occurred during jury selection. Miller-El’s argument is that the courts considered only the number of challenges to jurors (10 out of
11 prospective African American jurors) and failed to consider other evidence showing that prosecutors in Dallas County had for years excluded blacks from juries as a matter of routine practice. This argument is supported by four former prosecutors whose terms of office cover the period from 1977 to 1989 and who confirmed that the Dallas County office did apply a policy of excluding blacks from juries. Further supporting this argument is a 1986 article in a local newspaper citing a 1963 internal memo in the district attorney’s office advising prosecutors not to include “Jews, negroes, Dagos, Mexicans or a member of any minority race” as a jury member.
Further, in the early 1970s, the prosecutor’s office employed a training manual that contained advice on jury selection to the effect that a prosecutor should not include any member of a minority group because “they almost always empathize with the accused.” The Dallas Morning News has examined 15 capital murder trials from 1980 through 1986 and has revealed that prosecutors excluded 90% of African Americans qualified for jury selection. Nevertheless, the assistant district attorney in the Miller-El case disclaimed any notion that he had challenged the 10 African American jurors on grounds of race. He claimed that he was trying to assemble the best possible jury and that his office had no policy of racial discrimination. Despite these claims, at least three of the potential African American jurors challenged in the Miller-El case supported capital punishment and wanted to be on the jury.
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