The Supreme Court's decision in Buck v. Davis, --- U.S. ---, Case No. 15-8049 (2017), is definitely worth a read.
This is was capital habeas out of Texas. During the penalty phase, the defendant's attorney introduced expert testimony that the defendant's race made him statistically more likely to pose a danger in the future. The jury sentenced him death.
As the Supreme Court explained, the "case then entered a labyrinth of state and
federal collateral review, where it has wandered for the
better part of two decades." The district court and Ffith Circuit denied the habeas claim on essentially a hybrid of procedural and merits-based grounds. The Supreme Court took the case and, in an opinion by Chief Judge Roberts, reversed.
The Court found that Mr. Buck satisfied both prongs of the Strickland ineffective assistance of counsel test. It also ruled on some procedural issues, with good language on when to grant a COA.
I won't go into too much detail, but there is a great passage worth sharing (thanks to Chuck Sevilla for first reading it to me):
[W]hen a jury hears expert testimony that expressly makes a defendant’s race directly pertinent on the question of life or death, the impact of that evidence cannot be measured simply by how much air time it received at trial or how many pages it occupies in the record. Some toxins can be deadly in small doses.
