Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court’s first Latina justice, filed a rare statement commenting on a Texas court’s refusal to hear an appeal. More specifically, she slammed the prosecutor for trying to “substitute racial stereotype for evidence and racial prejudice for reason.”
In the case, Bongani Calhoun was convicted of participating in a drug conspiracy and was sentenced to 15 years in jail. During the trial the prosecutor, Sam Ponder, an assistant US attorney, made the argument that the jury should use “common sense” in their decision.
“You’ve got African Americans, you’ve got Hispanics, you’ve got a bag full of money. Does that tell you — a light bulb doesn’t go off in your head and say, ‘This is a drug deal?'” the prosecutor said.
“I hope never to see a case like this again,” she said in a statement joined by Justice Stephen G. Breyer.
“By suggesting that race should play a role in establishing a defendant’s guilt, the prosecutor here tapped a deep and sorry vein of racial prejudice that has run through the history of criminal justice in our nation,” she wrote. “… It is deeply disappointing to see a representative of the United States resort to this base tactic more than a decade into the 21st century.”
