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free blog. free. tom. the unofficial motto here is that. texas. is. the system. all of these inmates know that death row is an impossible place to escape from. throughout the years thomas miller's hopes of his case being revisited have faded away from his season's past he has seen many of his companions depart for the execution and. his wait just

a few visits by close friends or family who have also had to prepare for the execution. cost me i'll go has your been confronted. you know that my friend who have been executive on ways wanted to protect people from the trauma of looking at them die. a few lawyers have tried to attack the texan system. jim marcus is one of them and he made a one of a kind discovery. in his office of the law faculty of austin thomas miller case takes up a lot of space and eventually jim marcus entered this case almost by chance in one thousand nine hundred four back then he was working for an organization of volunteer lawyers defending inmates with no means of their own. there are five by

the time the case was over the file itself filled to fall it was a huge file. because over the overtime we just collected a lot of evidence mostly documenting the racism and. for months jim marcus studied all the files from the one nine hundred eighty six case one stumbled upon something. that dallas county had a manual that instructed prosecutors to discriminate against potential jurors on the basis of race religion gender and were wearing what jim marcus discovered was staggering a discrimination handbook written at the end of the sixties and used by judges to systematically exclude black members of the jury. basically it's based on stereotype it's based on prejudices it says that. you know people

who are from any minority group are going to empathize with the accuser. expresses a general distrust of women. and pretty clearly you know says don't take jewish from. not only jews but also fat people those who don't wear ties were considered anti conformists and were said to make bad jurors. they're looking for white hunters. to be the jurors. it is clearly stated that white hunters are always good jurors for the state these prosecutors in thomas' case said they were not following us but if you look at their notes it'll say black male no tie ante for no tie his beard no tie no ties wearing jeans. so you can see that with the with the notes show is that they were exactly

following this man. the initials b m r for a black male he's a black man and has a beard that's one who is left out. l f is for latino females here is a hispanic lady who did not make it through selection. these are a few of many handwritten annotations corresponding to potential jury members presenting themselves to the court for the defendant. to recount but to try. was back hatred that was going to. do a process. in the bigotry the. discrimination that was coming openly going on with them that's the system. that thomas miller's trial ten out of the eleven black jurors were left out we met one of them. believe fields agreed to meet us at an airport lobby.

twenty two. years after the miller trial she seems almost surprised by our questions to live in a society that is full of discrimination you have to have a thick skin so therefore things bother me that way you know i don't take it personally it's just institutional have you been asked to be a good juror oh yes but i go up to the courts own as they call it a panel is. always rejected so. continuous. face this is we can sure say i guess i don't know but the thing is that yes i have been called to jury duty many times since then and i've never been selected to be part of a jury either my name is carol and i only testimonies of the ignored

jurors overlapped. a movie made ten years ago by some young lawyers confirms this and also reassure cheri that her father was a victim of a truncated trial so. i would ask him. how did they feel and what were they feeling at a time when they could not. sit on the jury because they were black and i was they are wrong. because. of the evidence. i think even when i die races will still be going for. similar to what happened in the miller case more than ninety percent of black jurors have been left out from trials over the past forty years in dallas. this is the whole we're led by this man judge bill hill. how can one

explain that such ways will. punished. perhaps because the death penalty is a source of contention in the u.s. . we have officials here who are right wing politicians who do not value human life and who use the death penalty to promote their political careers to promote their or their life and their lifestyle and all our politicians or elected course our governor all our state representatives our senators. our judges criminal court judges are district attorneys they're all elected and they like to say they think it's good to be appear to be tough on crime in the toughest on crime they think they can be used to have the death penalty and the support to death. is the death penalty used as a means to profit bill hill now retired did not wish to comment on this. really

focused on two issues both having to do with the fairness of his trial one was the racism the other one was that you know thomas was shot by the police when he was arrested with a with a bullet round of ammunition that explodes on impact so a bullet entered his abdomen and then exploded and shredded you know parts of his organs and so forth. and he was an intensive care for a long time and they basically moved him from the hospital the jail and tried him and at the time of his trial he had lost you know fifty pounds he was you know out of it he was on medication he was not competent to be tried. very poor health and incapable of attending a trial this confirms a document that we got ahold of. famous dr ari keogh of wrote the following.

mr thomas miller was not able to defend himself even if he could be present at the audience. any man presenting such depression pain and wounds wouldn't be able to endure such a stressful event even more so if the trial was a life or death decision. in two thousand and one thomas miller had been on death row for already fourteen years when his lawyer jim marcus finished his counter investigation which detailed the discrimination and irregular. artes of the trial. file was sent to the appeals court of texas. i thought we had so much evidence there is no way that we can. and then we basically was executed for late february twenty first two thousand and two.

you know it was a sense of relief you know it's like all our bureaus exhausted we have a very left with some of the supreme court and you know live in order afterwards like. this it's like you know. in the beginning of two thousand and two this was the last chance the u.s. supreme court in washington is the highest in the land it is the only one capable of revoking a stiff made decision each year the supreme court's receives around one thousand mans from death row inmates and only two or three are accepted for thomas miller's defense a true race against death started so as a bow it was less than a week before the execution and the supreme court. announced that it would hear the case that was a huge relief. convinced that there was discrimination during the trial the supreme court demanded that the death sentence be reexamined but the techs in court did not

see eye to eye with this decision and refused to admit that miller had been a victim of racist practice he was to be executed. texan justice supported by a strong conservative public opinion and by very active victim associations refuses all the examination of the case. i believe as we practice criminal justice in texas we do a better job of it than any other state in america. one we execute our convicted capital murder we have the highest execution rate in america we're not afraid to do it we do it well we tolerate a lot in texas you can be anything you want in this state but be prepared to pay the consequences of your actions. and i think. that the rest of the country should take note of all of that so in that respect i believe texas is the most progressive state in america. how can such confidence be understood

suspicions of errors increased in texas. and universities and for those who defend human rights the miller case has become a symbol. one of the main leaders of the abolitionist movement and teaches history at dulles university. not surprised by the ruthlessness of the techs in the forty's. and why do you think they want to kill the minorities so badly because the state is a hateful racist state that. wants to kill poor and poor people and people of color this is a hate state this is the region the south is still hateful the american criminal justice system is discriminatory this is

a normal part of the american criminal justice system and this state is among the worst of the worst the high profile nature of his case. which has embarrassed correct fully this state on multiple occasions to show the how wrong and terrible the state was in its prosecution of him the state will do all that it can it will make the extra effort to prove that the end result would be ok we couldn't kill him but we'll make sure he never gets out using it were it would die in jail i don't think thomas miller ill is ever going to see the light of day as a free man i hope that he would confronted with texan stubbornness and refusal to recognize any mistake in the miller case the supreme court decided in june two thousand and five to reverse the decision. in its report the count's denotes the selection of the jurors by race and concluded that there is no doubt that the use

of temple can texas allows judges to discriminate. with six votes against three judges of the supreme court's order the new trial. jurors first cases during the sixty's seventy's and eighty's this manual in the miller case goes all over the media for ever before how the state of texas been asked to revoke a death sentence was. yet with him in the matter. and when i went i actually went down there because the tell me that he had to tell me. so when i went down he come out of course he's always mollett and he told me that his case had been heard at the supreme courts and that they made in this. retrial his case that they were actually here at the supreme court. at their point

it was like my heart had stopped. he has an opportunity to actually get off of death row. justice hadn't said its last word. execution returned. by the supreme court decision dallas county general attorney bill hill struck back. he refused to deny miller's guilt and warned that we will request the death penalty at the new trial. police want to rescind body and convict and prosecutors want to win for some reason the truth goes out the window nobody gives a damn about the truth they want to win. defense attorneys prosecutors they want to win. in order to win as the year two thousand and seven came to an end justice proposed

a deal to thomas miller attorneys refer to it as an increment but miller's friends and family saw it as a trap even the trial would take place again and he might end up sentenced to death or he could plead guilty and a sentence would be changed to life imprisonment in order not to die thomas miller had to accept to stop claiming the innocence which he had been defending for twenty years for his friends the choice was clear better to plead guilty event to be sentenced to death again thomas miller still wants to defend his innocence but richard the detective found the words to tear him from it if you want to represent yourself i told you that i would stay with you. i would help you and i will do that but. be assured that there's only one thing that's going to happen. you're going to go to trial you're going to be found guilty and you're going to be sentenced to death. that's going to. you're going to die but you're going. to save

his life thomas miller finally decided to give up defending his innocence despite all the unanswered questions despite all the efforts that were made to counter investigate and despite the real doubt about whether or not he is guilty thomas miller signed. on march nineteenth two thousand and eight he signed this document in which he pleads guilty and sees. his sentence changed to life imprisonment. he left death row forever and was transferred to this detention center where we met him nineteen years after our first encounter. with the good. we. don't talk to us is teams attorneys to talk to us about two weeks off in all different times that we had from people turning everything

right. people who really had a serious love and appreciation for us so he would be. and they all was what it was to to. to not go back to try ok when did you realize that this thread is here. but. when they said we had a license. the judge said do we have a license and he shook our hands that he wishes good luck. in the rest of life. if dead port has something to begin to. it's just pressure that begins to rise off for us mentally and psychologically almost like physically that we would carry around. him it was almost like a million times we told what really

a million tons of pressure just began to just disappear off gradually you know leave him deaf wrote was. do it was a blessing but in the same time you know leaving the human beings because these real people. for thomas miller and for all the inmates discriminated over the past few decades in texas. cokesbury the face of one man. craig watkins is the new attorney general of dallas county he follows the much feared bill hill and he is the first black man to take on this job in texas. the trial which he witnessed on september nineteenth two thousand and eight was a landmark one man walking forward between all his lawyers had spent twenty five years in prison for rape which he had always tonight finally authorized by the attorney general d.n.a. tests proved his innocence and the judge then had to decide if he were to be freed

or not. so i. want to see. the first set. are. my thoughts or. feelings. thank you thank you thank you thank you thanks tony general what kinds personally congratulated johnny lindsay and wished him good luck he also told him how to term and he is to continue

to fight against wrongful accusations. that johnny is the nineteenth man to be freed in only a few months and more than three hundred files have yet to be examined. mr watkins place it's a very very it's a great day for you. for me a peace great day for commerce just system. and i hope that we can take care of this issue for you think it's easier to be in the frickin american to do this work well you know i don't know if it's been here. but from where i come from i didn't have a choice i had to do. many innocents in prison obviously yes well you know that. with how they exclude certain individuals from the jury because of their race. in texas some years ago. and early ninety's mid ninety's

we decided to change how we. might actually have people shouldn't juries but i think i want a long way to make sure that our juries are diverse but we need to go even further because prosecutors there's a culture and this is just a small moment in time and so at the end of the day i understand and hopefully when i'm done. it will have become justice system a legal system that asks for forgiveness and gives freedom back to those who are wrongfully accused such as the image that holds on to she dreams of freedom for her father. since his sentence has been changed to life imprisonment she can visit him every week she does not shy away from her one goal to get my dad. that's what lloyd's maybe. there's no stopping point. there's

no stopping point to. be true based upon the law in the state of texas people definitely don't get out of prison you know moments from the rest of. prison ok. so if we get out you know it would be a blessing and we'd like to be able to show that. a person who come from what you call the nose of loads you know you know deaf you know or actually some of it come from that actually making a positive contribution to humanity so we're hoping that that would cause people stop and look maybe execution is not the answer maybe it's something best we can do is ask your people in order to prove to commit people as well you know him to some

degree or another we're just hoping that we can be a positive estimate of how life can be a system of example for humanity in general you know. oh you know. everything that. you think a seven year goes the girls of because for them and for us to ok yes i think like the thomas miller was thirty four when he was sentenced is now sixty one but he's still. in theory it is possible to imagine a conditional release for good behavior and after more than twenty years spent in jail. but. in reality is fate is still in the hands of the texans you disagree system. fit.

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blemish it is. going to take three days for judges three the arrangements three. three. three legs mostly blog lot of video for your media project a free media. tom you. see a story so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear

or see some other part of it and realize everything is. welcome to the big picture. in the lead up to. the law. go to alabama. play.