By Graciela Tiu
WASHINGTON — A coalition including Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP), a former attorney general, former federal and state judges, and current and former elected prosecutors has filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to grant a writ of certiorari in Pitchford v. Mississippi, a death penalty case that raises serious concerns about racial bias in jury selection.
The amici argue that the Fifth Circuit’s decision upholding Terry Pitchford’s conviction must be reviewed, warning that it conflicts with clearly established Supreme Court precedent under Batson v. Kentucky, which prohibits striking jurors based on race. They assert that the Mississippi courts failed to conduct the rigorous, fact-based inquiry Batson requires and instead accepted the prosecutor’s race-neutral explanations at face value.
Pitchford was sentenced to death after Doug Evans—the same Mississippi prosecutor whose jury strikes were found racially discriminatory by the Supreme Court in Flowers v. Mississippi—used peremptory challenges to strike 80 percent of eligible Black jurors. The trial court failed to evaluate the plausibility of Evans’s justifications in light of the broader pattern of discrimination, and the Mississippi Supreme Court declined to intervene, relying on procedural waiver doctrines that amici contend violate federal law.
According to the FJP release and the amicus brief, such failures do not only harm the person on trial—they inflict a “triple harm”: they undermine the fairness of the trial, deny excluded jurors a core civic role, and damage public trust in the legal system. The brief emphasizes that jury service is one of the most significant forms of democratic participation, second only to voting, and that excluding Black citizens from that process sends a message of inferiority and exclusion.
“Prosecutors are entrusted with seeking justice, not just convictions, and that duty demands rooting out bias in our courtrooms,” said Aramis Ayala, executive director of FJP. “When people of color are excluded from juries because of their race, it doesn’t just harm the defendant, it erodes public trust in our legal system. This brief calls on the Court to take seriously its role in guarding against racial discrimination and to ensure our justice system lives up to its constitutional promise of fairness and equality.”
The brief draws on empirical research showing that all-white or nearly all-white juries are more likely to convict Black defendants, deliberate less thoroughly, and reach less just outcomes. It also highlights the long history of prosecutors using pretextual, race-neutral language to justify discriminatory strikes—a practice the Supreme Court has repeatedly condemned but that persists across the country.
In Pitchford’s case, amici argue, the prosecutor’s history of misconduct, including the Flowers litigation, should have been a red flag for the courts. Yet the Mississippi judiciary failed to scrutinize the pattern, reinforcing what amici describe as a systemic problem: courts too often defer to prosecutors and ignore signs of racial bias.
The brief also notes that multiple states and prosecutors’ offices have implemented reforms to curb the discriminatory use of peremptory strikes. These reforms include eliminating or limiting such strikes and adopting new rules to reduce implicit bias. Arizona, for example, abolished peremptory strikes altogether in 2021 and saw increased jury diversity without compromising trial outcomes.
In asking the Supreme Court to reverse the Fifth Circuit’s denial of Pitchford’s request for a new trial, amici stress that the Court must send a clear message: racial bias in jury selection is incompatible with equal justice under law and cannot be tolerated—especially in capital cases, where the stakes are life and death.
The Court is being urged to grant the petition and restore the constitutional safeguards Batson promised nearly 40 years ago.
