Supreme Court to take up Mississippi death row inmate’s challenge over excluding Black jurors

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to take up a legal battle out of Mississippi in which a prosecutor is alleged to have excluded Black jurors in a trial to win a death sentence against an 18-year-old Black murder defendant.

Terry Pitchford petitioned the high court over his death sentence, which was handed down in 2006. His trial began with jury selection on Feb. 6, 2006, and ended three days later with a death verdict, convicting him of capital murder.

Jury selection and opening arguments took place on the same day. Pitchford’s lawyers also told the Supreme Court that the crime scene investigation was botched and that Pitchford at least once tried to invoke his right to remain silent.

More pointedly, they’re arguing the prosecution was racist in the selection of jurors, given that Pitchford is a Black man.

“During this compressed capital trial, District Attorney [Doug] Evans used four of his allotted 12 peremptory strikes to remove four of the five Black venire persons provisionally seated in the jury’s empaneling,” Pitchford’s petition to the justices stated.

“Discovery also yielded the prosecutors’ marked up venire lists clearly denoting race and gender,” the petition said.

Pitchford was convicted of killing a grocery store clerk during a botched robbery in 2004 with another person who was a juvenile at the time.

Prosecutors can strike jurors for cause — based on a conflict of interest with the case or bias — and also for no reason whatsoever, known as a peremptory challenge. But peremptory challenges are limited in number and cannot be done for any discriminatory reason such as for gender, race or religion.

The high court in 2019 took up a case of another Mississippi death-row inmate who also claimed the same prosecutor, Mr. Evans, kept a Black juror off his jury.

Burl Cain, the commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, is the defendant in the case.

In Mr. Cain’s filing, the state argues that the justices should not have taken up Pitchford’s request because the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against him.

“None of his arguments has merit,” the state’s filing read.

The case is Terry Pitchford v. Burl Cain, commissioner of Mississippi Department of Corrections. It will be heard early next year and a ruling is expected by the end of June.