A prosecutor in Wharton County has accused the elected district attorney of working repeatedly to keep blacks off juries in that rural county southwest of Houston.

In a hearing earlier this month, Assistant District Attorney Nathan Wood told a judge that his boss, District Attorney Ross Kurtz, told him to keep black residents off juries in criminal trials in order to improve the prosecution's chances of winning the case.

"I was not 'instructed' to strike black jurors so much as I was advised or encouraged to do so as a matter of trial strategy," Wood recently told a judge. "Whatever the true intentions behind the statements made in our office, they made me feel uncomfortable."

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that it is illegal for attorneys to consider race when deciding who gets on a jury.

The issue emerged during a black woman's trial that began in February with Wood and another prosecutor striking the only three blacks on a jury panel. Defense attorney Mark Racer objected, forcing the prosecutors to give race-neutral explanations for their actions.

"This is just a win-at-all costs mentality that shouldn't be there," Racer said this week. "And clearly one of the prosecutors was uncomfortable with it."

Kurtz on Tuesday denied the allegations in an email to the Houston Chronicle.

"My instructions and guidance has always been and will always be that prosecutors should not take race into account in exercising the choices allowed by law on which potential jurors to strike," he said.

The allegations raise questions about other convictions in Wharton County where blacks my have been excluded from juries, according to defense attorneys.