ATLANTA — Prosecutors in west Georgia focused on the race of black potential jurors as they purposely and systematically excluded them from the trials of black men facing the death penalty four decades ago, lawyers for one of the men said in a court filing this week.

An all-white jury in 1977 convicted Johnny Gates of raping and murdering a white woman and sentenced him to die. His lawyers have asked a judge for a new trial and argued in a court filing Monday that newly disclosed prosecution trial notes from a string of capital cases tried in Muscogee County in the late 1970s, combined with the consistent striking of black prospective jurors, demonstrate systematic race discrimination in jury selection.

‘‘When you have this kind of race discrimination infecting a trial from the start, it really undermines the reliability of the proceedings all the way through,’’ said Patrick Mulvaney, a lawyer with the Southern Center for Human Rights, who is representing Gates.

Gates, 62, was later resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In addition to the allegations of racial discrimination during jury selection, other reasons he should have a new trial include suppression and destruction of evidence and a DNA claim involving evidence taken from the crime scene, Mulvaney said. A judge has scheduled a May 7 hearing on the motion for a new trial.

The US Supreme Court in May 2016 tossed out the death sentence given to Timothy Foster, a black Georgia man convicted and sentenced to die by an all-white jury in the slaying of a white woman. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the Foster case that Georgia ‘‘prosecutors were motivated in substantial part by race’’ when they struck black potential jurors from the jury pool.

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