Story highlights The Supreme Court on Monday granted a pair of cases on the death penalty for next term

Granting a case only requires four justices and does not indicate which way the court may be leaning

(CNN) The Supreme Court on Monday laid the groundwork for a significant debate on capital punishment next term, announcing it will take up two death penalty cases.

The first case granted by the court concerns Duane Buck, an African-American man on death row who was sentenced to death after his own lawyer introduced evidence that he was more likely to be dangerous in the future because he is black.

Under Texas law, a death sentence can be imposed only if prosecutors can find that the inmate poses a future danger to society. At issue was testimony from Dr. Walter Quijano, a clinical psychologist who was called as an expert witness by the defense.

In briefs, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton emphasized the brutality of the crimes Buck was convicted of and said that his ineffectiveness claim is procedurally barred in part because the lower court reasoned that he could not establish the "extraordinary circumstances" necessary for relief.

"There is no question that state-sponsored discrimination is not to be tolerated," Paxton wrote in the briefs, but he said that Quijano's testimony was not the only evidence against Buck. "Certainly the record does not establish that the assessment of the death penalty in this case was a result of Dr. Quijano's single statement that minorities are overrepresented in the criminal justice system," he wrote.

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