DURANT — A new trial date has been set for a man accused of stabbing a black teenager to death in what authorities described as a racial murder.

Ernest Eugene Phillips, 40, was charged in 1996 with first-degree murder for the stabbing death of Roderick Jason McFail, 17, Pilot Point, Texas. A Bryan County jury found him guilty in 1997 and sentenced him to death.

In May, a 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled that jurors should have been allowed to consider a second-degree depraved mind murder verdict during Phillips’ trial. The court reversed the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence.

During a pre-trial hearing Wednesday in Bryan County District Court, Phillips waived his right for a trial in September or January 2011.

The case is now set for the April 2011 jury docket and the state will proceed with prosecution, according to a court minute.

The crime was described as a racial murder.

According to court testimony during the trial, Phillips, who is white, encountered McFail, who was with friends in the parking lot of the Love’s store on North First Avenue in 1996. Witnesses said Phillips approached McFail, uttered a racial slur, and stabbed him in the chest.

Phillips then walked into the store and was asked to leave. On his way out, he walked past McFail and said, “How’d that feel?” McFail died just after midnight. Authorities said that Phillips did not know McFail.

The case was tried by then-District Attorney James Thornley and Assistant District Attorney Greg Jenkins, who is still an assistant district attorney in Atoka. Then-District Judge Farrell Hatch presided over the case.

Following his 1997 conviction, the case had been appealed all the way through the state, according to Bryan County District Attorney Emily Redman, and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the conviction/death sentence.

Redman said that a lower federal court also upheld the sentence. The case was then appealed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, who reversed the sentence and conviction on the grounds that a second-degree murder conviction should have been an option.

Second-degree murder means the defendant did not necessarily intend to kill the victim.

During Phillips’ trial, his attorney argued that Phillips had been abused as a child and mental health experts testified that he was bipolar, plus showed signs of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Phillips had been angry that day, according to testimony.

During Wednesday’s hearing, District Judge Mark Campbell ordered Phillips to be held in the Bryan County Jail without bail.

Campbell assigned the case to Bryan County Associate District Judge Rocky Powers. Phillips is being represented by Matthew D. Haire of Norman.