The Supreme Court sent a message to prosecutors and judges yesterday that it will cast a skeptical eye on the exclusion of blacks from juries.

The justices, by a 7-2 vote, threw out a death sentence and murder conviction because a Louisiana prosecutor kept blacks off the jury in a trial he called his "O.J. Simpson case."

While the high court has ruled previously that jurors cannot be excused solely because of their race, the practice has continued, often with the approval of judges, legal scholars said.

"Courts have consistently been willing to accept any explanation, however farfetched, as to why the exclusion of a minority juror wasn't actually based on race," Hofstra University law professor Eric Freedman said.

The court's ruling yesterday indicates judges should be less accepting of prosecutors' explanations, Freedman said.

The justices said state prosecutor Jim Williams improperly excluded blacks from the jury that convicted Allen Snyder of killing his estranged wife's companion. Snyder is black and the jurors were white.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, said the trial judge should have blocked Williams from barring a black juror. Alito's opinion made no mention of Simpson.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia dissented. Thomas said he would not "second-guess" the judge.

During jury selection in the trial, Williams disqualified all five blacks in the pool of prospective jurors. The Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that prosecutors may not exclude people from a jury solely because of their race. The court already had sent Snyder's case back to the Louisiana courts following a ruling in 2005 that bolstered the prohibition on race bias in jury selection.

The prosecutor's explanation for striking a prospective black juror was "suspicious," said Alito. The prospective juror's supervisor said he did not think a schedule conflict between the upcoming trial and the prospective juror's work would be a problem.

In contrast, the prosecutor accepted white jurors who disclosed conflicting obligations "that appear to have been at least as serious as" the prospective black juror who was excused, Alito wrote.

The trial took place in August 1996, less than a year after Simpson was acquitted of killing his ex-wife and a male friend of hers. Leading up to the trial, Williams made repeated public references to the Snyder case as his "O.J. Simpson case."

Snyder was convicted of first-degree murder in Jefferson Parish, just outside New Orleans. He was found guilty of repeatedly slashing his estranged wife, Mary Snyder, and a man, Harold Wilson, with a knife when he found them in a car outside her mother's home in August 1995. His wife survived, but Wilson died.

Adding to the Simpson comparison, Snyder told the police just before his arrest that he was suicidal. Simpson, armed with a gun and apparently considering suicide, led police on a dramatic, televised chase before surrendering.

In a 4-3 decision, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that race had no part in the state's decisions involving black potential jurors.

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