{"id":92,"date":"2026-05-28T17:42:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T17:42:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=92"},"modified":"2026-05-28T17:42:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T17:42:46","slug":"supreme-court-sides-with-death-row-inmate-in-challenge-to-racial-discrimination-in-jury-selection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=92","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court sides with death row inmate in challenge to racial discrimination in jury selection"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a Mississippi man\u2019s conviction and death sentence. By a vote of 5-4, the court in Pitchford v. Cain<\/em> agreed with Terry Pitchford that the judge at his 2006 trial had not properly analyzed whether the prosecutor in Pitchford\u2019s case violated the Constitution\u2019s ban on racial discrimination in jury selection.<\/p>\n

Read more How often do courts actually cite emergency docket orders?<\/a><\/p>\n

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority, in a nine-page joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Quoting a 2019 opinion in which the court threw out the conviction of Mississippi inmate Curtis Flowers in a case that involved the same prosecutor, Kavanaugh acknowledged that \u201c\u2018America\u2019s trial judges operate at the front lines of American justice\u2019 and \u2018the job of enforcing\u2019\u201d the Supreme Court\u2019s 1986 decision in , holding that the use of peremptory challenges (that is, challenges for any reason) to remove potential jurors based on race violates the Constitution, \u201c\u2018rests first and foremost with trial judges.\u2019\u201d But in Pitchford\u2019s case, Kavanaugh wrote, \u201cthe Mississippi trial court erroneously omitted\u201d a key part of the Batson<\/em> inquiry.<\/p>\n

Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented, in a 10-page opinion joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett. In his view, Kavanaugh\u2019s \u201copinion errs on the law and the factual record alike.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pitchford, who was 18 at the time, was charged with murder for his role in the 2004 shooting death of a shopkeeper. A 16-year-old, Eric Bullins, fired the shots that actually killed Reuben Britt; he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.<\/p>\n

At Pitchford\u2019s trial, the local district attorney, Doug Evans, used his peremptory challenges to excuse four potential jurors, all of whom were Black.<\/p>\n

Pitchford\u2019s lawyers objected, arguing that the strikes violated Batson<\/em>. The trial judge (who had also presided over Flowers\u2019 case) rejected that argument, resulting in a jury with just one Black juror in a county with a population that is 40% Black.<\/p>\n

The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld Pitchford\u2019s conviction and sentence. A Batson<\/em> challenge has three parts. At the first step, the defendant must make an initial showing that a peremptory strike of a juror was based on race. At the second step, prosecutors must provide a reason for the strike that is not based on race. And at the third step, the defendant\u2019s lawyers have a chance to show that the prosecutors\u2019 race-neutral reason is in fact pretextual \u2013 that is, fabricated to cover up the real reason. The state supreme court concluded that Pitchford had waived his right to make his\u00a0Batson<\/em>\u00a0claim because he had not offered any arguments to the trial court at the third step to rebut the prosecutor\u2019s race-neutral explanations \u2013 for example, that one potential juror was late to court and another had a relative who committed a \u201csimilar offense\u201d to Pitchford.<\/p>\n

Read more Alabama redistricting dispute returns to the Supreme Court<\/a><\/p>\n

Pitchford went next to federal court in Mississippi to seek post-conviction relief. U.S. District Judge Michael Mills\u00a0agreed with Pitchford that the juror strikes violated\u00a0Batson<\/em> and ordered the state\u00a0to either retry Pitchford or release him.<\/p>\n

The state appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which . It held that under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the federal law governing post-conviction claims, the dispositive question was not whether the Mississippi Supreme Court\u2019s ruling was correct but instead whether the decision was \u201can \u2018objectively unreasonable\u2019 application of a Supreme Court \u2018holding[]\u2019\u201d \u2013 which, the court of appeals concluded, it was not.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the Supreme Court reversed the 5th Circuit\u2019s decision and sent the case back to the lower courts. Kavanaugh\u2019s analysis in his opinion for the majority was succinct. \u201cAfter a prosecutor asserts race-neutral reasons for a peremptory strike,\u201d he explained, \u201cthe defense counsel must at least have an opportunity to argue that the asserted race-neutral reasons were not the actual reasons\u2014that is, the reasons were pretextual. Then, the trial court can determine whether those asserted reasons were the actual reasons or instead were pretextual.\u201d But in Pitchford\u2019s case, Kavanaugh continued, \u201cwhether due to confusion, oversight, an overly hurried jury selection process, or some other cause, things broke down, and the ordinary trial-court procedure for resolving Batson<\/em> claims at step three never occurred\u2014notwithstanding the repeated efforts of Pitchford\u2019s counsel to pursue and preserve the Batson<\/em> objection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kavanaugh conceded that, in cases involving AEDPA, federal courts normally are \u201cdeferential to the state court. But deference does not mean abdication,\u201d he stressed. And here, \u201cthe Mississippi Supreme Court\u2019s conclusion that Pitchford waived his opportunity to rebut the prosecutor\u2019s proffered race-neutral reasons was unreasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his dissent, Gorsuch emphasized the high bar that an inmate like Pitchford, who was convicted in state court, must clear to obtain federal post-conviction relief under AEDPA. \u201cShowing legal error, we have said, isn\u2019t enough\u201d to obtain relief, he wrote. \u201cInstead,\u201d he said, an inmate \u201cmust demonstrate that \u2018no fairminded jurist could reach the state court\u2019s conclusion under this Court\u2019s precedent.\u2019\u201d And when it comes to factual findings, he continued, the state court\u2019s finding \u201cmust have so little support in the record that only an \u2018unreasonable\u2019 jurist could make it.\u201d In Gorsuch\u2019s view, Pitchford \u201chas failed to satisfy either of these standards.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Announcement of opinions for Thursday, May 28<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a Mississippi man\u2019s conviction and death sentence. By a vote of 5-4, the court in Pitchford v. Cain agreed with Terry Pitchford that the judge at his 2006 trial had not properly analyzed whether the prosecutor in Pitchford\u2019s case violated the Constitution\u2019s ban on racial discrimination in jury […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-court-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSupreme Court sides with death row inmate in challenge to racial discrimination in jury selection - American Service Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=92\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Supreme Court sides with death row inmate in challenge to racial discrimination in jury selection - American Service Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a Mississippi man\u2019s conviction and death sentence. 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