Jurors’ Use of N-Word Confronts Supreme Court Divided on Race

“They should just take the nigger out and shoot him behind the jail.”

“I have wondered if black people even have souls.”

Death-row inmates point to evidence that jurors from their long-ago trials said those things about the men they were tasked with judging impartially.

If the U.S. Supreme Court takes up their appeals, then the justices will be asked to decide if the clear racism so tainted these proceedings in Oklahoma and Georgia that the men should be spared the ultimate punishment.

Dale Baich, attorney for Julius Jones, whose trial would’ve ended with a bullet in the back of ...