Forty years after Batson, racial bias in jury selection persists

The Supreme Court is once again being asked a fundamental question: Will the constitutional promise of equal protection under the law be meaningfully enforced, or quietly set aside?

That question is at the heart of Pitchford v. Cain, a case being decided by the court in the coming months, which exposes how racial discrimination in jury selection continues to shape who receives a fair trial in America.

Terry Pitchford, a Black man, was sentenced to death in Mississippi in 2006 for his role in a robbery that resulted in a shopkeeper’s death. He was not the shooter and had just turned 18 at the time of the offense.

During his trial, prosecutors struck four of the five prospective Black jurors. His attorney objected, arguing that the strikes were racially motivated in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. No court has ever meaningfully reviewed that claim, which Mississippi courts dismissed on procedural grounds. This allowed credible allegations of racial discrimination to go unexamined.

During oral arguments, several Supreme Court justices raised concerns that the trial court had not allowed defense counsel to fully challenge the strikes, effectively insulating the conduct from scrutiny.

This was also not an isolated incident. The Supreme Court previously found that the same prosecutor in Pitchford’s case had engaged in racial........

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