Racial bias allegations in jury makeup as US top court set to hear death row case of Black inmate

Certain names will be familiar to the Supreme Court in the latest case involving a Black death row inmate from Mississippi, with arguments set for Tuesday.

Doug Evans, a now-retired prosecutor with a history of dismissing Black jurors for discriminatory reasons, knocked all but one Black person off the jury that tried and convicted Terry Pitchford.

Judge Joseph Loper allowed it to happen. The state Supreme Court upheld the conviction. Just seven years ago, in a case involving the same district attorney, trial judge and state high court, the Supreme Court overturned the death sentence and conviction of Curtis Flowers because of what Justice Brett Kavanaugh described as a “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals.” Seven of the current nine justices were on the court then. The Supreme Court has in recent years taken a dim view of defendants' claims in capital cases, especially in the last-minute efforts to stave off execution.

The court in December agreed to hear Pitchford's appeal relating to a claim of racial discrimination that, in other cases, has gained traction even among some conservative justices. Pitchford was sentenced to death for his role in the 2004 killing of Reuben Britt, the owner of the Crossroads Grocery, just outside Grenada in northern Mississippi. Pitchford, 40, was 18 when he and a friend went to the store to rob it. The friend shot 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 sentenced to death.

The case has been making its way through the court system for 20 years. In 2023, US 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.