Supreme Court rules for Black death row inmate from Mississippi over racial bias in makeup of jury

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled for a Black death row inmate from Mississippi who claims there was racial bias in the makeup of the jury that convicted him.

By a 5-4 vote, the justices sided with Terry Pitchford, who was sentenced to death for his role in the killing of a grocery store owner.

“In this case, whether due to confusion, oversight, an overly hurried jury selection process, or some other cause, things broke down,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court. Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices joined with Kavanaugh.

There were 11 white jurors and one Black juror in a trial with similarities to that of another Black man on Mississippi’s death row, whose conviction the high court overturned seven years ago.

It’s unclear what happens next in Pitchford’s case. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who dissented, suggested the state still could argue Pitchford’s conviction should be sustained. If his conviction is overturned, the state could seek to retry him.

“Mr. Pitchford is now entitled to a fair trial in the state court,” Joseph Perkovich, who argued the case for Pitchford at the Supreme Court, wrote in an email.

Doug Evans, a now-retired prosecutor with a history of dismissing Black jurors for discriminatory reasons, had excused four other Black people at Pitchford’s trial. Black people make up more than 37% of Mississippi’s population.

The Supreme Court ruled 40 years ago in Batson v. Kentucky that jurors could not be excused from service because of their race and set up a system by which trial judges could evaluate claims of discrimination and the race-neutral explanations by prosecutors.

Pitchford’s case focused on whether his lawyers did enough to object to Judge Joseph Loper’s rulings and whether the state Supreme Court acted reasonably in ruling they had not.

Pitchford’s lawyers made the necessary arguments and the state high court acted unreasonably, Kavanaugh wrote.

In dissent, Gorsuch wrote that Pitchford had to show that no fair-minded judge could rule as the Mississippi court did and that the record in the case was crystal-clear in his favor.

“As I see things, Mr. Pitchford has failed to satisfy either of these standards,” Gorsuch wrote, joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas.

In 2019, the Supreme Court overturned the death sentence and conviction of Curtis Flowers, because of what Kavanaugh then described as a “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals.” Evans was the prosecutor in that case, and Loper presided over the final two of Flowers’ six trials.

Pitchford, now 40, was 18 when he and a friend decided to rob the Crossroads Grocery, just outside Grenada in northern Mississippi. The friend shot store owner Reuben Britt three times, fatally wounding him, but was ineligible for the death penalty because he was younger than 18. Pitchford was tried for capital murder and was sentenced to death.

The case has been making its way through the court system for 20 years. In 2023, U.S District Judge Michael P. Mills overturned Pitchford’s conviction, holding that the trial judge did not give Pitchford’s lawyers enough of a chance to argue that the prosecution was improperly dismissing Black jurors.

Mills wrote that his ruling was partially motivated by Evans’ actions in prior cases. A unanimous panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the ruling.

Evans did not respond to The Associated Press’ attempt to reach him for comment when he retired.

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