Supreme Court Hears Case for Resentencing of Duane Buck

Photo: Shutterstock

In 1995, Duane Buck shot and killed his ex-girlfriend and her friend. He was tried and found guilty, which was not surprising as his guilt wasn’t really in question. However, he was subsequently sentenced to death because an “expert” psychologist, called by his own defense, said that, as a black man, Buck was more likely to be violent again in the future.

Buck has spent the last 20 years trying to get that death sentence overturned because of the obviously racist testimony that earned him the death penalty in the first place.

His execution was stayed by the Supreme Court but he has since been trying to get a new sentencing hearing, one that will not be marred by the unabashedly racist testimony of one witness.

Texas has continually argued that, because his own defense team called the witness, there are no grounds for a retrial, but the Supreme Court, which began hearing the case on October 5, does not agree with that argument.

“It seems wildly more prejudicial to me when the defense attorney introduces it,” said Justice Elena Kagan. “When the defendant’s own lawyer introduces this, the jury is going to say, well, it must be true.”

It has been pointed out that nobody, on the prosecution, the defense, or behind the bench, so much as responded to the allegation that being black made Buck more violent. In 1995, in Texas, that may have seemed to many of them to simply be the truth, but it is empirically untrue and flagrantly biased.

The point of the American justice system is to give all accused persons equal opportunity under the law to present their case, and for that case to be heard as objectively as possible.

One can argue about whether or not objectivity is possible, but one cannot argue that Buck’s case was marred by racism, and it should not have been.