Lawyer: Wash. ruling in Black man’s case showed racial bias

By GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press

SEATTLE (AP) — The attorney for a Black man serving a virtual life sentence for shootings he committed at 17 has asked the Washington Supreme Court to reconsider a split ruling that upheld his sentence. The attorney says the leniency the court granted white defendants in similar situations reveals racial bias. The court last month upheld 61-year sentence for 45-year-old Tonelli Anderson over angry dissents from four justices. The decision abandoned a precedent issued just a year earlier in which the court said — in the case of a white defendant — that such lengthy punishments for juvenile killers were unconstitutional because it left them no hope of a meaningful life outside prison. The state’s response is due later this month.