It’s not hard to lose track of someone who’s been sent to prison for 30 years. But we’re back in touch with Frank Teague. Any week now, the highest court in the land will rule, and if things go his way Frank Teague will be back on the streets for the first time since 1977. For the second time in his life he will have litigated his way out from behind bars.
A few days later, Teague was cut loose. We met him outside the MCC and bought him a beer. He was too jumpy to finish it. Marriage, college, real life–suddenly it all loomed ahead, close enough to taste. He borrowed a few dollars and charged into the night. Eleven months later he held up an A&P in Forest Park and shot it out with two policemen waiting outside to nab him. One officer was wounded in the leg.
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The jury found Teague guilty on every count. The judge gave him 30 years. But before he was shipped to Stateville, Teague asked us to visit him at the Cook County Jail. He opened a briefcase and out came a third white hood! Given the chance, he’d have pulled his Ku Klux Klan routine yet again.
Teague wasn’t out for Christmas. Not in 1979 or 1980 or ’81 or ’82. His appeal went nowhere. But in April 1986, the Supreme Court spoke. It wiped its old rule on peremptory challenges off the books. The Court’s previous position had been that, sure, the 14th Amendment guarantee of “equal protection of the laws” was violated if the prosecution systematically used its challenges to keep members of the defendant’s race off the jury. But to prove a racial motive was next to impossible: the defendant actually had to establish a pattern extending over several trials (meaning that the first time or two a prosecutor stacked a jury racially he was bound to get away with it). Now the burden of proof shifted; from now on, if a black defendant, say, faced an all-white jury, the prosecution would have to show he was looking at a coincidence.
The Court heard oral arguments on Teague’s case last October 4. If Teague prevails, and the state of Illinois does not hold him to retry him, Teague will be a free man.
Law students across the country are watching to see what happens to Frank Teague. The issue in this winter’s national moot court competition is gender discrimination in jury selection. Many of the same 6th and 14th amendment arguments apply. Patricia Unsinn has prepped the Northwestern team. David Bindi told us, “We are being flooded by calls by law schools.”
