Some familiar names to the Supreme Court in a death row case over racial
bias in jury makeup
[March 30, 2026]
By MARK SHERMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — 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. Last week, the court turned away the appeal of Texas
death row inmate Rodney Reed over the dissent of three liberal justices,
who believe he should be allowed to test evidence that he has argued
would exonerate him.
Claim of racial discrimination
But 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, U.S 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.
Mills wrote that his ruling was partially motivated by Evans’ actions in
prior cases. A unanimous panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
reversed the ruling.
In the course of selecting a jury, lawyers can excuse a juror merely
because of a suspicion that a particular person would vote against their
client.
The Supreme Court tried to stamp out discrimination in the composition
of juries in Batson v. Kentucky in 1986. The court ruled then that
jurors could not be excused from service because of their race and set
up a system by which trial judges could evaluate claims of
discrimination and the race-neutral explanations by prosecutors.
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The Supreme Court is seen, Feb. 27, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rahmat
Gul, File)
In Pitchford's case, the prosecution excused four of the five
remaining Black people in the jury pool and defense lawyers
objected. Loper, the judge, accepted all four explanations and moved
on without analyzing whether race was the reason, Mills wrote.
Issues in Pitchford's case
The Supreme Court case focuses on whether Pitchford's lawyers did
enough to object to Loper's rulings and whether the state Supreme
Court acted reasonably in ruling they had not.
Joseph Perkovich, who will argue Pitchford’s case Tuesday, said the
record in the case clearly favors his client. Loper “did not grasp
he had to a constitutional duty to determine whether the reasons the
district attorney gave for striking the Black citizens were credible
and truthful,” Perkovich wrote in an email. “The judge simply failed
even to try to discharge that critical duty, despite the defense’s
efforts.”
In the state's written filing, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn
Fitch defended the state Supreme Court decision and said Evans did
not inappropriately strike Black people from the jury.
Pitchford should be released or retried if he wins at the Supreme
Court, his lawyers argued in written filings. Mississippi said the
case should return to the state Supreme Court to review his
arguments that the jury strikes were discriminatory.
Flowers was tried six times in the shooting deaths of four people.
He was released from prison in 2019 and the state dropped the
charges against him the following year, after Evans turned the case
over to state officials. Evans stepped down from his job in 2023.
On its own, Mills wrote, the Flowers case does not prove anything.
But he said that the Mississippi Supreme Court should have examined
that history in considering Pitchford’s appeal.
“The court merely believes that it should have been included in a
‘totality of the circumstances’ analysis of the issue,” Mills wrote.
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