Supreme court sides with Mississippi man on death row in racial bias case

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of Terry Pitchford, a Black man on death row in Mississippi, who argued his capital murder conviction was the result of racial bias in jury selection. Pitchford, convicted at age 18 in 2004, claimed state prosecutors improperly removed four out of five Black potential jurors. The Court found that the trial judge did not give Pitchford's attorney adequate opportunity to rebut the prosecutor's race-neutral reasons for striking the jurors and did not determine if those reasons were pretextual. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, highlighting the judge's failure to properly apply the Batson challenge standard. This ruling echoes a previous Supreme Court decision involving the same prosecutor and judge that overturned another Black man's conviction due to jury discrimination.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled in favor of Terry Pitchford, a Black death row inmate from Mississippi, who alleged racial bias in his jury selection. The court found that Pitchford's lawyers did not have adequate opportunity to object to the dismissal of Black jurors by prosecutor Doug Evans, who has a history of such actions. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that "things broke down" during the jury selection process, leading to only one Black juror in a trial where Black individuals constitute a significant portion of the population. This ruling echoes a previous Supreme Court decision that overturned the conviction of Curtis Flowers due to similar jury selection issues involving Evans and the same judge. Pitchford, now 40, was sentenced to death for his role in a 1997 robbery that resulted in a store owner's death.