On Tuesday, during the first conference of their October 2009 term, the nine justices of the United States Supreme Court will consider the petition for certiorari of Anthony Terrell Booker -- who, loyal Mississippi Supreme Court junkies will recall, had his capital murder conviction affirmed late last year despite some serious problems with jury selection.

The short version is this: during jury selection of Booker's trial, prosecutors struck an African-American juror on the basis of a prior conviction, despite the fact that the district attorney's office had been told (correctly) that the venireman in question had no prior convictions. The question before the state Supreme Court became this: is the allegation of a juror's prior conviction a valid race-neutral basis for the exercise of a peremptory strike, even when that allegation is factually inaccurate? In a heated 5-4 decision, a majority of the Court's members wasn't willing to second-guess the trial judge's determination that it all amounted to an honest mistake.

The good news for Booker is that decision now stands subject to a review from the highest court in the land. The bad news for Booker is that so do about a thousand other cases. The term's first conference, famously known as the "long conference," presents the high court with the task of sifting through aaaaaaaall their petitions to select the relative handful of cases that will be heard by the justices. At the end of the day, the result is a bit like your average fantasy football draft: only the best get selected, and even a lot of really good ones go unnoticed.

The fate of Booker's petition could be made known on Monday, October 5. Or not. It's pretty much up to The Nine at this point.