Notoriously silent Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas surprised those in court Wednesday by speaking up during arguments and asking just his second question in a decade.
Thomas, who has been on the court since 1991, broke his silence to ask a question in the case of a Mississippi man accused of killing four people. The man, Curtis Flowers, has been tried six times prior for the alleged 1996 crime.
The leading conservative justice waited until near the end of arguments before chiming in and asking Flowers’ attorney, Sherri Lynn Johnson, whether the defense had struck any jurors during the last trial and what their races were.
Flowers, a black man, appealed the case to the Supreme Court after being found guilty and sentenced to death in the sixth trial. A podcast later drew attention to the case.
The defense alleged that the prosecutor in the case had a history of racial bias and had struck every black juror possible during peremptory challenges for the first four trials. The fifth trial, declared a mistrial, didn’t have on-the-record information about the races of jurors.
His defense team argued that in the final trial the prosecutor took the first black juror before striking the rest.
The basis of the case is whether a prosecutor’s alleged history of discrimination during past jury selections should be taken into account when examining new claims of discrimination.
The last time Thomas asked a question was in 2016, during the oral arguments of a case involving gun rights.
