Unsurprisingly, the U.S. Supreme Court held today in Buck v. Davis that it was ineffective assistance of counsel for the defense lawyer to call an expert witness in the penalty phase to testify about "statistical factors," one of which could be construed to be a statement that a defendant was more likely to be dangerous in the future because he is black.

I don't read the testimony that way.  The underlying fact that the expert testified to was:  "There is an over-representation of Blacks among the violent offenders."  That is a regrettable but undeniable demographic fact.  Still, most jurors (and many lawyers) do not have the logical sophistication to distinguish between that fact and the forbidden inference, and it should not have been introduced into the trial at all.

Justice Thomas in dissent notes that the Court had to leap over many procedural hurdles in its result-driven quest to grant relief to this one murderer, but he predicts these gymnastics will be narrowly applied only to unusual cases like this one.  I hope he is right, but I have my doubts.  If time permits, I will blog more about this case later.

Memo to the Texas Legislature:  How many problems does your "special issues" sentencing system have to cause before you wake up, dump it, and sentence on the basis of aggravating v. mitigating factors like most states do?  Asking jurors to predict "future dangerousness" is a legal minefield, and Texas has stepped on too many mines already.