Supreme Court Rules Death Row Inmate Can Challenge Racial Bias in Jury Selection

In Pitchford v. Cain, 608 U.S. ___ (2026), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Mississippi Supreme Court unreasonably applied the clearly established precedents of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), to determine that death row inmate Terry Pitchford waived his opportunity to rebut the prosecutor’s asserted race-neutral reasons for the peremptory strikes of four black prospective jurors.

Facts of the Case

In 2004, two black teenagers, Terry Pitchford and Eric Bullins, robbed a grocery store near Grenada, Mississippi. During the robbery, Bullins shot and killed the white store owner. Bullins reached a plea agreement and received a 20-year sentence for the homicide. The State charged Pitchford with capital murder and sought the death penalty. During jury selection at Pitchford’s trial, the prosecutor used peremptory strikes against four of the five black potential jurors.

As the Supreme Court held in Batson v.Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), the Equal Protection Clause bars prosecutors from exercising peremptory challenges based on race. In Batson and subsequent cases, the Court has spelled out a three-step process for a trial court to determine whether a prosecutor employed a peremptory challenge based on race.

In this case, Pitchford’s counsel raised an objection under Batson and made a prima facie showing that the strikes of the four black jurors were based on race (step one). The trial court asked the prosecutor for race-neutral reasons for each strike, and the prosecutor offered reasons (step two). The trial court declared the prosecutor’s stated reasons to be race neutral, but the trial court did not afford defense counsel an opportunity to rebut the prosecutor’s race-neutral reasons as pretextual (step three); nor did it make any findings regarding whether the prosecutor’s stated reasons were pretextual.

At the close of jury selection, defense counsel sought to raise the Batson issue again, but the trial court twice cut off defense counsel. The empaneled jury, consisting of 11 white jurors and 1 black juror, convicted Pitchford of capital murder and sentenced him to death.

On direct appeal, the Mississippi Supreme Court concluded that Pitchford had waived his Batson objection by not arguing to the trial court that the prosecutor’s proffered explanations were pretextual. Pitchford later filed a habeas corpus petition in U. S. District Court.

Applying the applicable standard to obtain federal habeas relief under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the District Court concluded that the Mississippi Supreme Court had unreasonably applied Batson and had unreasonably determined that Pitchford waived his Batson objection. The District Court explained that no state court had conducted the full three-step Batson inquiry, and that the trial court had “thwarted” the “attempt by Pitchford’s counsel to argue pretext.” The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the District Court, concluding that the Mississippi Supreme Court’s waiver finding was reasonable.

Supreme Court’s Decision

The Supreme Court reversed by a vote of 5-4, siding with Pitchford. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority, which included Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

In reaching its decision, the majority emphasized that the Mississippi trial court erroneously omitted a key step of theBatsoninquiry by failing to afford Pitchford’s counsel a sufficient opportunity to rebut the prosecutor’s proffered race-neutral reasons for striking the four black jurors and never determining whether the prosecutor’s stated reasons were pretextual.As Justice Kavanaugh explained:

After a prosecutor asserts race-neutral reasons for a peremptory strike, the defense counsel must at least have an opportunity to argue that the asserted race-neutral reasons were not the actual reasons—that is, the reasons were pretextual. Then, the trial court can determine whether those asserted reasons were the actual reasons or instead were pretextual. 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—notwithstanding the repeated efforts of Pitchford’s counsel to pursue and preserve the Batson objection.

The majority further found that the State’s argument that Pitchford preserved his Batson objection but nonetheless somehow waived his Batson pretext argument “does not make much sense and is not a reasonable reading of this record.” As Justice Kavanaugh noted, at that key point in the jury-selection process—after the prosecutor had asserted facially race-neutral reasons for the peremptory strikes—the Batson objection was a Batson pretext argument. Defense counsel’s rebuttal necessarily would include a pretext argument—specifically, that similarly situated white jurors were not challenged by the prosecutor. If allowed to continue, Pitchford could have argued that the prosecutor did not challenge white jurors similarly situated to challenged black jurors, which is precisely what Pitchford’s post-trial motion later did argue.

Finally, the majority acknowledged that in cases involving AEDPA, federal courts are typically deferential to the state court. However, as Justice Gorsuch emphasized, “deference does not mean abdication.” He added, “the Mississippi Supreme Court’s conclusion that Pitchford waived his opportunity to rebut the prosecutor’s proffered race-neutral reasons was unreasonable.”

Dissent

Justice Neil Gorsuch authored a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett. According to Justice Gorsuch, Pitchford failed to satisfy the high bar to obtain federal post-conviction relief under AEDPA.