{"id":10110,"date":"2026-05-28T14:31:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=10110"},"modified":"2026-05-28T14:31:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:31:16","slug":"supreme-court-rules-for-black-death-row-inmate-from-mississippi-over-racial-bias-in-makeup-of-jury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=10110","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court rules for Black death row inmate from Mississippi over racial bias in makeup of jury"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><strong>By MARK SHERMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014\u00a0The Supreme Court\u00a0on Thursday ruled for\u00a0a Black death row inmate from Mississippi\u00a0who claims there was racial bias in the makeup of the jury that convicted him.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=10108\">Ex-CIA official charged with stealing millions of dollars in gold bars from the federal government<\/a><\/p>\n<p>By a 5-4 vote, the justices sided with Terry Pitchford, who was sentenced to death for his role in the killing of a grocery store owner.<\/p>\n<p>There was one Black juror in a trial with similarities to that of another Black man on Mississippi\u2019s death row, whose conviction the high court overturned seven years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Doug Evans, a now-retired prosecutor with a history of dismissing Black jurors for discriminatory reasons, had excused four other Black people.<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court ruled 40 years ago in\u00a0Batson v. Kentucky\u00a0that 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.<\/p>\n<p>Pitchford\u2019s case focused on whether his lawyers did enough to object to Judge Joseph Loper\u2019s rulings and whether the state Supreme Court acted reasonably in ruling they had not.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=10106\">Oil prices climb, but US stocks hold near their records<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death sentence and conviction of\u00a0Curtis Flowers, because of what\u00a0\u00a0as a \u201crelentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals.\u201d Evans was the prosecutor in that case, and Loper presided over the final two of Flowers\u2019 six trials.<\/p>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Pitchford, now 40, was 18 when he and a friend decided to rob the Crossroads Grocery, just outside Grenada, in northern Mississippi. The friend shot store owner Reuben 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 was sentenced to death.<\/p>\n<p>The case has been making its way through the court system for 20 years. In 2023, U.S District Judge Michael P. Mills\u00a0, holding that the trial judge did not give Pitchford\u2019s lawyers enough of a chance to argue that the prosecution was improperly dismissing Black jurors.<\/p>\n<p>Mills wrote that his ruling was partially motivated by Evans\u2019 actions in prior cases. A unanimous panel of\u00a0\u00a0reversed the ruling.<\/p>\n<p><em>Follow the AP\u2019s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at\u00a0https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/us-supreme-court.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=10104\">Hollywood Walk of Fame honors Adam Carolla as Jimmy Kimmel, Dr. Drew Pinsky cheer him on<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court ruled for a Black death row inmate from Mississippi who says there was racial bias in the jury that convicted him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10109,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-based-on-facts-either-observed-and-verified-directly-by-the-reporter-or-reported-and-verified-from-knowledgeable-sources","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - 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