Washington — Some names will be familiar to you supreme court In the recent case involving A A black death row inmate from Mississippiwith arguments set for Tuesday.
Doug Evansa now-retired prosecutor with a history of dismissing black jurors for discriminatory reasons, removed all but one black person from the jury that tried and convicted Terry Pitchford.
Judge Joseph Loper allowed this to happen. The state Supreme Court upheld the conviction.
Just seven years ago, in a case involving the same prosecutor, trial judge and state Supreme Court, the Supreme Court overturned the death sentence and conviction Curtis Flowers Because of what Justice Brett Kavanaugh described As a “relentless and determined effort to rid the jury pool of black individuals.”
Seven of the nine current justices were on the court at the time.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has taken a dim view of the claims of defendants in capital cases, especially last-minute efforts to avoid execution. Last week, the court rejected the appeal Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed on Three liberal justices dissentedwho believe he should be allowed to test the evidence he said would exonerate him.
But the court agreed in December to hear Pitchford’s appeal regarding a racial discrimination claim that, in other cases, had gained traction even among some conservative justices.
Pitchford was sentenced to death for his role in the murder of Crossroads Grocery owner Robin Britt outside Grenada in North Mississippi in 2004. Pitchford, 40, was 18 when he and a friend went to the store to rob the store. The friend shot Brett three times, fatally wounding him, but he was not eligible for the death penalty because he was under 18. Pitchford was tried for murder and sentenced to death.
The case has been working its way through the court system for 20 years. In 2023, U.S. District Judge Michael B. Mills Pitchford’s conviction overturned, He argued that the trial judge did not give Pitchford’s attorneys sufficient opportunity to argue that the prosecution was improperly dismissing black jurors.
Mills wrote that his ruling was motivated in part by Evans’ actions in previous cases. Unanimous committee of Fifth Circuit US Court of Appeals Overturn the ruling.
During jury selection, attorneys can excuse a juror simply because they suspect a particular person will vote against their client.
The Supreme Court attempted to eliminate discrimination in the composition of juries in the country Batson vs. Kentucky in 1986. The court ruled at the time that jurors could not be excused from service because of their race, and created a system by which trial judges could evaluate claims of discrimination and race-neutral interpretations by prosecutors.
In the Pitchford case, the prosecution excused four of the five remaining blacks on the jury and defense attorneys objected. Mills wrote that Judge Loper accepted all four explanations and moved without analyzing whether race was to blame.
The Supreme Court case focuses on whether Pitchford’s lawyers did enough to object to Looper’s rulings and whether the state Supreme Court acted reasonably in ruling when they did not.
Joseph Berkowitz, who will plead Pitchford’s case on Tuesday, said the record in this case clearly favors his client. “Looper did not realize that he had a constitutional duty to determine whether the reasons the prosecutor gave for beating black citizens were credible and truthful,” Berkowitz wrote in an email. “The judge simply failed to even attempt to perform this critical duty, despite the defense’s efforts.”
In the state’s written filing, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch defended the state Supreme Court’s decision and said Evans did not inappropriately strike blacks on the jury.
Pitchford should be released or retried if he wins in Supreme Court, his lawyers said in written submissions. Mississippi said the case should go back to the state Supreme Court to review its arguments that the jury strikes were discriminatory.
Flowers has been 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 referred the case to state officials. Evans steps down from his job in 2023.
The Flowers case itself doesn’t prove anything, Mills wrote. But he said the Mississippi Supreme Court should have considered that history when considering Pitchford’s appeal.
“The court believes only that it should have been included in an analysis of the ‘totality of circumstances’ of the case,” Mills wrote.