Supreme Court sides with Black death row inmate who alleged discrimination

Politics Supreme Court sides with Black death row inmate who alleged racial discrimination in jury selection By Melissa Quinn Melissa Quinn Senior Reporter, Politics Melissa Quinn is a senior reporter for CBSNews.com, where she covers U.S. politics, with a focus on the Supreme Court and federal courts. Read Full Bio Melissa Quinn May 28, 2026 / 11:58 AM EDT / CBS News Add CBS News on Google Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of a Black death row inmate from Mississippi who argued racial discrimination during the jury-selection process before his trial.The high court divided 5-4 in siding with Terry Pitchford, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joining the three liberal justices in the majority. Kavanaugh authored the opinion for the majority in the case, known as Pitchford v. Cain.Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett dissented.The case arose from the 2004 robbery of a grocery store in Grenada, Mississippi, by two Black teenagers, Pitchford and Eric Bullins, in which the owner of the store, a White man, was killed. Bullins fired the shots that killed the owner, Reuben Britt, but because he was 16 at the time of the robbery, he was not eligible for the death penalty. Bullins was sentenced to 20 years in prison.Pitchford, who was 18 at the time, was charged with capital murder, and the state sought the death penalty.During jury selection in Mississippi state court, then-District Attorney Doug Evans used what's known as a peremptory strike to reject four of five potential Black jurors, which Pitchford's defense lawyers objected to under a Supreme Court decision called Batson v. Kentucky. In that case from 1986, the high court held that prospective jurors cannot be excluded based on their race. In that ruling and in subsequent cases, the Supreme Court laid out a series of steps for how trial courts should determine whether prosecutors' use of a peremptory strike was base...