Supreme Court Rules Mississippi Courts Misapplied Batson in Death-Row Case

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Thursday for Mississippi death-row inmate Terry Pitchford, saying state courts improperly shut down his challenge to the exclusion of Black jurors from his capital trial.

At Pitchford’s trial, the prosecutor used peremptory strikes to remove four of five Black prospective jurors, and the jury that convicted him consisted of 11 white jurors and one Black juror. Pitchford’s lawyer objected under Batson v. Kentucky, the 1986 decision that bars prosecutors from excluding jurors because of race. But after the trial judge asked the prosecutor for race-neutral reasons and accepted them, the defense was not given a meaningful chance to argue those explanations were a pretext for discrimination. The trial court twice cut off defense counsel when he tried to revisit the issue.

In Pitchford v. Cain, No. 24-7351, decided May 28, the justices said the Mississippi Supreme Court unreasonably applied Batson and also unreasonably found that Pitchford had waived his chance to rebut the prosecutor’s explanations. The court reversed the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and sent the case back for further proceedings. The ruling did not itself order a new trial or otherwise vacate Pitchford’s conviction or death sentence.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett.

Pitchford was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for his role in the Nov. 7, 2004, robbery of the Crossroads Grocery in Grenada County, Mississippi, in which store owner Reuben Britt was shot and killed. Pitchford was 18 at the time. According to the court record summarized in the opinion, the fatal shots were fired by co-participant Eric Bullins, who later took a plea.

The dispute before the Supreme Court centered not on Pitchford’s guilt, but on whether the courts properly completed the three-step Batson inquiry. Under that framework, once a defendant raises an inference of racial discrimination in jury strikes and the prosecutor offers race-neutral reasons, the court must decide whether those reasons are genuine or instead a cover for discrimination.

Kavanaugh wrote that Mississippi’s handling of the issue fell short even under the highly deferential standard that applies in federal habeas corpus review of state convictions. “In this case, whether due to confusion, oversight, an overly hurried jury selection process, or some other cause, things broke down,” he wrote. Quoting prior precedent, he added: “Deference does not by definition preclude relief.”

The decision is also notable because the prosecutor at Pitchford’s trial was Doug Evans, the longtime Mississippi district attorney whose jury-selection practices were also scrutinized by the Supreme Court in Flowers v. Mississippi in 2019. In that case, the justices found racial discrimination in jury selection.

Pitchford had won relief in 2023 from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, which concluded that the trial and state appellate courts had not completed the full Batson analysis. The 5th Circuit reversed in 2025, and the Supreme Court has now reversed that ruling.

The practical effect of Thursday’s decision is limited but significant: Pitchford prevailed at the high court on the question of how his Batson claim was handled, and the lower courts must now take up the case again on remand.