WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments March 31 in a long-running Mississippi case that asks whether an accused man was improperly denied the right to challenge alleged racial discrimination in jury selection. Since 2006, the case of Pitchford v. Cain has generated controversy and multiple appeals over whether, under habeas corpus law, the accused waived his right to object to racially biased jury strikes, according to a recent press release from Phillips Black Inc.
Terry Pitchford was convicted of capital murder in Grenada, Mississippi, in 2006. According to Phillips Black, the prosecution’s case demonstrated that Pitchford’s accomplice in a 2004 botched robbery, not Pitchford himself, fired the shot that killed shopkeeper Reuben Britt. Pitchford had no prior convictions, and Phillips Black reported that he was convicted “following a coerced statement.”
According to the Constitutional Accountability Center, which filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of Pitchford, District Attorney Doug Evans used peremptory strikes to exclude four Black citizens from serving on Pitchford’s jury. Oyez reports that there were 36 white and five Black potential jurors in the pool.
Pitchford will be the second case heard by the Supreme Court concerning Evans’ jury selection procedures, according to Phillips Black. In 2019, the court ruled in Flowers v. Mississippi that Evans misused peremptory strikes to exclude Black prospective jurors during Curtis Giovanni Flowers’ trial and five retrials. Flowers, who had been sentenced to death for the 1996 murder of furniture store employees during an armed robbery, was subsequently released from death row, according to Oyez.
According to Phillips Black, both the Pitchford and Flowers cases involve a precedent set by the Supreme Court in 1985 in Batson v. Kentucky. That ruling requires the state to provide race-neutral reasons for peremptory strikes if a defendant challenges the jury selection process as racially discriminatory.
The judge whom the Supreme Court in Flowers found failed to recognize the racial bias underlying Evans’ peremptory strikes — a responsibility under Batson — was the same judge who presided over Pitchford’s 2006 trial, according to Phillips Black.
Phillips Black reports that the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld Pitchford’s conviction and sentence in 2010, arguing that the accused gave up his right to challenge the district attorney’s jury selection conduct when the defense failed to clearly raise the challenge at trial. However, according to the Constitutional Accountability Center, “the trial-court transcript shows Pitchford’s counsel attempting to argue pretext immediately after [the prosecution’s race-neutral] reasons were given until being cut off by the trial court.”
In 2023, a federal district court granted habeas relief, concluding that the trial judge defied his responsibilities under Batson. In January 2025, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned the district court’s decision and adhered to the state’s initial arguments, according to Phillips Black.
In March, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether the Mississippi Supreme Court unreasonably determined that Terry Pitchford gave up his right to challenge the prosecution’s jury selection procedures as racially biased. According to the Constitutional Accountability Center, Batson v. Kentucky protects a defendant’s right to challenge racially biased jury selection under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
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