Tim Gilbert, a Black man recently convicted of aggravated assault by a jury in Giles County, Tennessee, will get a new trial after an appeals court ruled that display honoring the Confederacy set up in the jury deliberation room was unfairly prejudicial to him, the New York Times reports.
A Tennessee appeals court determined that prosecutors could not demonstrate that the display, which included a painting of Jefferson Davis in a gold frame and a Confederate flag, did not influence the jury. The room itself was also named after the group the Daughters of the American Confederacy.
“The flag displayed in the jury room is no different,” the court ruled. “Its original purpose was to ‘knit the loyalty’ of those in the Confederate states ‘to a flag’ that conveyed the political ideals of the Confederacy.”