One could argue, I suppose, that it's not necessarily racism — as in animus toward a particular racial group — when prosecutors seek to keep blacks off of capital cases with black defendants, just a desire to stack the jury in their favor (as the defending attorneys try to do as well). But since the Supreme Court has made it painfully clear in the past that you're not allowed to exclude jurors based on race, that kind of stacking illegal, whatever its morality.
Of course, even if he succeeds, the plaintiff will have spent 28 years on Death Row, while the prosecutors involved will, even assuming they are still practicing, get at most a slap on the wrist. Justice sometimes has to settle for small victories.
The Supreme Court Reviews a Case of Blatant Racism by Georgia Prosecutors
The prosecutors seeking to send Timothy Tyrone Foster to death row went about their job in a curious manner. During jury selection, they highlighted each black prospective juror’s name in green—on four different copies of the jury list—and wrote that the green highlighting “represents blacks.” On each black juror’s questionnaire,…
