Nashville judge gives death row inmate new hearing

A Nashville judge says a man on death row for nearly three decades will get a new hearing to determine if prosecutors discriminated against potential jurors based solely on their race.

Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman, 65, has been on death row since 1987 when he was convicted in Nashville of first-degree murder and other counts in the robbery and fatal stabbing of Patrick Daniels and attack on Norma Jean Norman, who survived. Abdur'Rahman, also known as James L. Jones Jr., challenged his convictions, arguing that prosecutors discriminated against African Americans in jury selection, but was not successful.

However, a new order from Nashville Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins will give Abdur'Rahman's lawyer a chance to argue that again.

Watkins writes that the U.S. Supreme Court case Foster v. Chatman potentially created new precedent that warrants an evidentiary hearing for Abdur'Rahman. That hearing has not been scheduled.

In May the justices reopened a case against Georgia inmate Timothy Foster after finding that prosecutors struck all four African American potential jurors based solely on their race. The U.S. Supreme Court has held for 30 years that lawyers cannot excuse potential jurors solely based on race.

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Brad MacLean, Abdur'Rahman's lawyer, declined to comment on the judge's order because the hearing is pending. But he said implicit bias is a problem that leads to the arbitrary implementation of the death penalty.

"Racial bias is a factor that contributes to the arbitrariness of the system," he said. "That racial bias can affect different phases of the case. It can affect the decision whether to seek the death penalty, it can affect how jury selection is conducted, it can affect the attitudes of jurors, whether they're aware of it or not."

In June, MacLean filed a new motion to reopen Abdur'Rahman's appeals, citing two other recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions. He argued that a Brentwood lawyer, Ed Miller, had analyzed more than 2,000 first-degree murder cases showing that the death penalty was arbitrary.

Watkins said the issue should have been raised on prior appeals or was more appropriate to be taken up in federal court.

And, like several other Tennessee judges have done in regards to other inmates, he found that the nation's top court in deciding the same-sex marriage case known as Obergefell last year, did not apply to inmates. Abdur'Rahman and several others on death row have argued that the justices affirmed a fundamental right to life that extended to condemned inmates.

"This court must conclude that while Obergefell indeed states a new rule of constitutional law related to same-sex marriage, that new rule does not alter the long-standing precedent under which the death penalty does not deny an individual his fundamental right to life," Watkins wrote.

There are 64 inmates on death row in Tennessee. The last execution in the state was in 2009. For several years, the state's single-drug lethal injection protocol has been challenged in court by more than half of those people on death row.

That issue, whether the protocol is constitutional, is currently being weighed by the Tennessee Supreme Court. Some say the state could resume executions if the court rules the protocol is constitutional.

Reach Stacey Barchenger at 615-726-8968 or on Twitter @sbarchenger.