The Supreme Court ruled Thursday in favor of a Black death row inmate from Mississippi who alleged racial bias in the composition of the jury that convicted him. 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 in northern Mississippi.

Pitchford, now 40, was 18 when he and a friend decided to rob the Crossroads Grocery near 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 sentenced to death.

The case centered on jury selection practices by Doug Evans, a now-retired prosecutor with a documented history of dismissing Black jurors for discriminatory reasons. During Pitchford's trial, Evans excused four Black potential jurors, leaving only one Black juror on the panel. The Supreme Court's decision focused on whether Pitchford's lawyers adequately objected to Judge Joseph Loper's rulings and whether the state Supreme Court reasonably concluded they had not.

The case bears similarities to another Mississippi death penalty case the Supreme Court overturned seven years ago. In 2019, the Court overturned the conviction of Curtis Flowers because of what Justice Brett Kavanaugh described as a "relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals." Evans was the prosecutor in that case as well, and Loper presided over the final two of Flowers' six trials.

The legal battle has been ongoing for two decades. In 2023, U.S. District Judge Michael P. Mills overturned Pitchford's conviction, ruling that the trial judge did not adequately allow Pitchford's lawyers to argue that the prosecution was improperly dismissing Black jurors. Mills noted that his ruling was partially motivated by Evans' actions in prior cases. However, a unanimous panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later reversed that ruling.

The Supreme Court's 1986 decision in Batson v. Kentucky established that jurors cannot be dismissed based on race and created a system for trial judges to evaluate discrimination claims and race-neutral explanations from prosecutors.