Race and the American Jury: From Strauder to Pitchford
A 146-year arc tracing the Supreme Court's struggle to enforce the Equal Protection Clause in jury selection — from the first post-Reconstruction ruling in 1880 to a 2026 death-row reversal tied to the same Mississippi prosecutor who discriminated across six trials.
Mar 1, 1880Main
Strauder v. West Virginia bars explicit racial exclusion from juries
The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that West Virginia's statute explicitly barring Black men from jury service violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Justice William Strong wrote the majority opinion, holding that the law denied Black defendants the right to a jury drawn from peers of their own race. The ruling banned only statutory exclusion, leaving intact the discretionary discrimination that prosecutors and jury commissioners would use for the next century.
Sep 23, 1955Main
All-white jury acquits Bryant and Milam in the Emmett Till murder
An all-white jury in Sumner, Mississippi deliberated 67 minutes before acquitting Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam for the kidnapping and murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, a Black teenager from Chicago. The courtroom was segregated throughout the trial, and Black witnesses faced intimidation. Bryant and Milam confessed to the killing in a 1956 Look magazine interview, knowing double jeopardy protection barred retrial.
Mar 8, 1965Main
Swain v. Alabama shields prosecutor peremptory strikes from review
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Robert Swain, a Black man sentenced to death in Talladega County, Alabama, could not challenge the prosecution's use of peremptory strikes to remove all six Black potential jurors from his trial. Justice Byron White wrote the majority holding that defendants must prove systematic exclusion across many cases to trigger Equal Protection scrutiny — a burden the Court acknowledged was nearly impossible to meet. The ruling gave prosecutors effectively unchecked authority to remove Black jurors for 21 years.
Apr 30, 1986Main
Supreme Court creates a three-step test for racial jury bias in Batson v. Kentucky
The Supreme Court overruled Swain v. Alabama 7-2, establishing that prosecutors may not use peremptory challenges to remove jurors solely on account of race. Justice Lewis Powell wrote the majority opinion, creating a three-step burden-shifting framework: the defendant shows a prima facie pattern; the prosecutor offers a race-neutral explanation; the court rules on pretext. James Batson, a Black man convicted of burglary in Louisville, had watched the prosecutor strike all four Black potential jurors before a jury of twelve whites convicted him.
Jun 13, 2005Main
Supreme Court reverses Texas death sentence over jury-shuffle discrimination in Miller-El v. Dretke
The Supreme Court reversed 6-3 the death sentence of Thomas Miller-El, a Black man convicted in Dallas County, Texas, finding that prosecutors had unconstitutionally excluded Black potential jurors through a technique called the "jury shuffle" and through racially disparate questioning of jurors. Justice David Souter wrote the majority, meticulously documenting how Dallas County prosecutors had used these methods for decades. Justice Stephen Breyer's concurrence argued that the Batson framework was so unworkable that peremptory strikes should be abolished entirely.
Jun 21, 2019Main
Flowers v. Mississippi Reverses Conviction After Prosecutor Strikes 41 of 42 Black Jurors Across Six Trials
The Supreme Court reversed 7-2 the capital conviction of Curtis Flowers, a Black man in Winona, Mississippi whom District Attorney Doug Evans had tried six times for the same murders. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority, finding that Evans had struck 41 of 42 Black potential jurors across the six trials and had applied racially disparate questioning in Flowers' sixth trial. NPR had published an investigative series documenting Evans's pattern before the ruling, which Judge Kavanaugh cited directly.
May 28, 2026Main
Supreme Court reverses a capital conviction in Pitchford v. Cain for skipping the Batson third step
The Supreme Court reversed 5-4 the capital conviction of Terry Pitchford, a Black man in Mississippi, because the trial court skipped the required third step of the Batson framework when evaluating the prosecutor's peremptory strikes. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority — his second consecutive ruling reversing a Mississippi capital conviction tied to prosecutor Doug Evans, who had struck 4 of 5 Black potential jurors. The ruling reinforced that courts must complete all three Batson steps and cannot rubber-stamp prosecutor explanations.
Supreme Court rules Mississippi skipped required racial bias test in jury selection
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on May 28, 2026, that a Mississippi trial court violated the Constitution by skipping a required step in evaluating a Black defendant's challenge to racially discriminatory jury selection. Terry Pitchford, now 40 and on death row, was convicted at a 2006 trial where the prosecutor struck 4 of 5 Black potential jurors. The trial judge accepted the prosecutor's race-neutral explanations but never gave Pitchford's lawyers a chance to argue those explanations were pretextual — the required third step under Batson v. Kentucky (1986). The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled Pitchford had waived that argument. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and the three liberal justices, wrote that the Mississippi Supreme Court's waiver conclusion was unreasonable under AEDPA's standard for federal habeas review. The case now returns to the lower courts, clearing the way for Pitchford's conviction to be invalidated. He could be retried. Justice Gorsuch dissented, joined by Thomas, Alito, and Barrett, arguing Pitchford failed to meet AEDPA's demanding standard for overturning a state court decision.