Supreme Court Overturns Conviction of Mississippi Man on Death Row

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a narrow 5–4 ruling favoring a Black man from Mississippi, Terry Pitchford, who was on death row after being convicted of capital murder. He contended that racial prejudice affected the jury selection process in his trial.

On Thursday, the court overturned Pitchford’s conviction. He had received the death sentence for his involvement in the 2004 armed robbery and murder of grocery store owner Reuben Britt when he was just 18. Interestingly, his co-defendant, Eric Bullins, who actually fired the fatal shots, avoided the death penalty since he was a minor at the time of the crime.

“Mr. Pitchford is now entitled to a fair trial in the state court — one without racial taint in the selection of his jury,” stated Joseph Perkovich, one of Pitchford’s attorneys. His legal team pointed out that there was only one Black juror in the 12-member jury panel, in a county where roughly 40% of the population is Black.

During the jury selection process, then-District Attorney Doug Evans used his peremptory strikes to dismiss four out of five potential Black jurors. Pitchford’s defense team objected, citing the Supreme Court’s 1986 ruling in Batson v. Kentucky, which prohibits exclusion of jurors based on race.

This ruling comes in light of a 2019 Supreme Court decision which overturned the murder conviction of Curtis Flowers, another Black man from Mississippi, after finding that Evans had unlawfully excluded Black jurors in that case as well.

Initially, Pitchford appealed his conviction to the Mississippi Supreme Court before seeking relief from a federal district court. In 2023, U.S. District Judge Michael P. Mills ruled in Pitchford’s favor, annulled the conviction, and pointed out that the trial court was dismissive of the defense’s arguments regarding the prosecutor’s race-neutral explanations.

“The trial court, seemingly eager to proceed to the case itself, quickly deemed the reasons as race-neutral and moved on,” Judge Mills remarked, indicating that the trial court hindered the defense’s efforts to prove the prosecutor’s reasons were pretextual.

However, a ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2025 reversed that decision, leading Pitchford to appeal to the Supreme Court. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, supported by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices.

“In this case, whether due to confusion, oversight, an overly hurried jury selection process, or some other cause, things broke down, and the ordinary trial-court procedure for resolving Batson claims at step three never occurred,” Kavanaugh detailed, acknowledging the ongoing efforts of Pitchford’s legal team to raise the issue.

Prosecutors indicated that Mississippi still has the option to retry Pitchford if they decide to move forward with the case again.