Thread by @LilianaSegura

I wrote (again) about the events in Terre Haute, where the Trump administration killed two more people last month. At least two more federal executions are set for this year, with additional dates likely to be on the way. theintercept.com/2020/09/09/fed…

One thing I want to quickly highlight is an interview I got too late to include in my previous piece about Lezmond Mitchell, whose lawyers tried unsuccessfully to get permission from the court to investigate racial bias among jurors. (More on that here): theintercept.com/2020/08/25/lez…

On the eve of Mitchell's death, I spoke to the jury foreperson. Despite the fact that she was among 11 white jurors (& one Navajo) she remembers thinking it was people "from all walks of life...all kinds of backgrounds. And I thought, Wow, this is really...a jury of your peers.”

“Can I tell you what the race or nationality was of everybody in that room? Absolutely not right now...I don’t recall any black people being on that jury … I couldn’t tell you if there were Hispanics in that room or not," she said. She did not remember any Native jurors either.

This does not mean she didn't take her job seriously. I think she did. But she believed "the system worked." And she was clearly either ignorant/indifferent to or unaffected by the ways in which an almost all-white jury--at a trial moved to Phoenix--was *not* a jury of his peers.

After the execution, Mitchell's former lawyer released a statement decrying the racism in his case. I touched on it here. But get ready to hear more about racism. As Keith Nelson said before he died: "pretty soon they’re gonna run out of us white dudes." theintercept.com/2020/09/09/fed…