Salon.com News | Court denounces race bias in capital cases: "A U.S. Supreme Court decision that warns against bias in death penalty cases is the latest indication that the high court may be losing confidence in Texas, the state that executes more people than any other, legal experts say.

In Monday's 6-3 decision, the court sided with black murder suspects in Texas and California who said their juries had been unfairly stacked with whites. It was the fourth time in two years that the court has intervened in a Texas death penalty case.

'I think that probably one term ago a critical mass of justices on the Supreme Court lost confidence that the state courts in Texas or the federal courts reviewing cases in Texas were doing what they were supposed to be doing to correct constitutional errors,' said David Dow, director of the Texas Innocence Network and a law professor at the University of Houston.

The Supreme Court used the cases to bolster its landmark 1986 decision barring prosecutors from disqualifying potential jurors based on their race. Justice Clarence Thomas, the only black member of the high court, voted against both suspects."

(Via Salon.)