The hour-long argument brought a surprise: a question by Justice Clarence Thomas, and one that went in an opposite direction. The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld Flowers’s 2010 conviction, in which Evans struck five of six black potential jurors. But he said that in the most recent trial — “Flowers VI,’’ the justices called it — the strikes could be justified. They can strike potential jurors they simply don’t want on the jury, and generally those choices cannot be second-guessed. But in the 1986 Batson decision, the Supreme Court said the challenges could not be used to strike potential jurors because of their race.

Source: Washington Post March 20, 2019 16:14 UTC