WILLIAMS V. PENNSYLVANIA, No.

15-5040
Cert. granted Oct. 1, 2015
Argument: Feb. 29, 2016
The Court agreed to hear Williams v. Pennsylvania, a case challenging former Pennsylvania
Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Castille's participation in an appeal of a case that had been
tried in Philadelphia while Castille was the city's district attorney. Terrance Williams (pictured) was
convicted and sentenced to death in Philadelphia in 1984 for the murder of a man prosecutors had
described to the jury as "a kind man [who had] offered [Williams] a ride home." Williams was 18 at
the time of the murder. His death sentence was reversed days before his scheduled execution in
2012 because prosecutors under Castille's tenure had withheld information that the victim, a church
deacon, had sexually abused teenagers he had met through his church and that the trial prosecutor
knew that the victim had sexually abused Williams. In 2014, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court
reinstated Williams' death sentence. Williams' lawyers asked Castille to recuse himself from the
case, saying he had "personally approved the decision to pursue capital punishment" against
Williams, continued to head the office when it defended the death verdict on appeal, and, in his
electoral campaign for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, had touted "the number of defendants he
had 'sent' to death row, including [Williams]." Castille denied the motion for recusal and authored a
concurring opinion that criticized Williams' lawyers and the judge who had ruled in Williams' favor.
The U.S. Supreme Court will take up the question of whether Castille's failure to recuse himself
violated Williams' rights, and whether it matters that Castille did not cast the deciding vote. Marc
Bookman, director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, said Castille's participation
created a conflict of interest: "It is his former office that is being accused of hiding evidence. He has a
stake in protecting the office that he led at the time that all this happened." Governor Tom Wolf
granted Williams a reprieve of his death sentence and announced a moratorium on executions in
Pennsylvania on February 13.
(M. Sherman, "Justices to Review Bias Claim Against Top Pennsylvania Judge," Associated Press,
October 1, 2015; J. Roebuck, "U.S. Supreme Court agrees to scrutinize Castille's role in death-row
inmate's case," Philadelphia Inquirer, October 1, 2015; Williams v. Pennsylvania, Petition for Writ of
Certiorari, June 12, 2015.)

FOSTER v. CHATMAN, No. 14-8349

Cert. granted May 26, 2015 as Foster v. Humphrey
Argument: Nov. 2, 2015
The Court granted cert. in the case of Timothy Foster, an African-American defendant who was
sentenced to death by an all-white jury after Georgia prosecutors had struck every black prospective
juror in his case. The Court will determine whether the prosecutions actions violated Batson v.
Kentucky, which banned the practice of dismissing potential jurors on the basis of race. Foster

challenged the prosecutions jury strikes as racially discriminatory at the time of jury selection, but
the trial court permitted the strikes. Nineteen years after the trial, his lawyers obtained the
prosecutors' notes from jury selection, which contained information that contradicted the raceneutral explanations for the strikes that the prosecution had offered at trial.
The notes reflect that the prosecution marked the name of each black prospective juror in green
highlighter on four different copies of the jury list; circled the word BLACK next to the Race
question on the juror questionnaires of five black prospective jurors; identified three black
prospective jurors as B#1, B#2, and B#3; and ranked the black prospective jurors against each
other in case it comes down to having to pick one of the black jurors. Prosecutors said they struck
each of the black jurors for race-neutral reasons and did not use the highlighted list in their final
decision. The Georgia Supreme Court upheld Foster's conviction. Foster's case will be heard by the
U.S. Supreme Court after the new term begins in October.
(S. Hananel, "Supreme Court will hear appeal from Georgia death row inmate over exclusion of black
jurors," Associated Press, May 26, 2015; see the prosecutors' juror list with black jurors
highlighted.) See also Scotusblog's treatment of the case.