Man on death row, tried by same prosecutor in Curtis Flowers' case, will get a new trial

A man who until Tuesday was the youngest person on Mississippi's death row had his capital murder conviction and death sentence vacated by a federal judge.

Terry Pitchford, 37, was sentenced to death in 2006 for killing a man in a Grenada County grocery store in 2004. The victim, Reuben Britt, who owned the grocery store, was shot with two different types of guns. One of the guns turned out to be Britt's own weapon.

According to court documents, Pitchford allegedly had been part of an earlier attempted robbery of the grocery store. When investigators with the Grenada County Sheriff's Office searched the vehicle that witnesses said they saw at the grocery store, they believed they found the victim's gun. The vehicle was parked outside Pitchford's house.

Pitchford will get a new trial after a federal court agreed with him that jury selection was faulty in his original case, and that some of the potential jurors were excused from the jury pool because they were Black, but had just cause.

U.S. District Judge Michael Mills of the Mississippi Northern District said the state Supreme Court erred when it ruled in Pitchford's 2010 appeal that the trial court did not excuse four out of five potential Black jurors because of their skin color.

Of the 12 jurors and two alternates, only one was Black, even though the population of Grenada County at the time was 40% Black, according to Pitchford's trial attorneys.

In Pitchford's appeal, he argued that some of the "race-neutral" reasons the state gave for striking four of the five Black potential jurors in the narrowed-down pool could have been used for dismissing white potential jurors.

Pitchford said the state struck only three of 35 white potential jurors during the same part of the process, even though some of the remaining white members of the panel had similar issues that were used to strike Black members.

Some of the "race-neutral" reasons given to dismiss the Black jurors, according to court documents, include:

• "Black female … is the one that was 15 minutes late. She also, according to (a) police officer … has mental problems. They have had numerous calls to her house and said she obviously has mental problems."

• "Black male … has a brother that has been convicted of manslaughter. And considering that this is a murder case, I don’t want anyone on the jury that has relatives convicted of similar offenses."

• "Black female (whose) brother … was convicted in this court of sexual battery. And her brother is now charged in a shooting case that is a pending case here in Grenada. And also, according to police officers, she is a known drug user."

• (Black male): "We have several reasons. One, he had no opinion on the death penalty. He has a two-year-old child. He has never married. He has numerous speeding violations that we are aware of. The reason that I do not want him as a juror is he is too closely related to the defendant. He is approximately the same age as the defendant. They both have never been married. In my opinion he will not be able to not be thinking about these issues, especially on the second phase. And I don’t think he would be a good juror because of that."

In addition, Pitchford's attorneys were never given the opportunity to rebut the state's reasons for dismissing the Black jurors, even though they attempted to call the court's attention to the matter.

"Thus, Pitchford believed 'the totality of the circumstances' demonstrated that theState used its preemptory strikes in a discriminatory manner," Mills wrote in his order vacating Pitchford's conviction.

"In its analysis, the Mississippi Supreme Court gave this step short shrift," Mills wrote. "The state appellate court reasoned, '[Pitchford] did not present these arguments to the trial court during the voir dire process or during post-trial motions.' The Mississippi Supreme Court then explained it could 'not now fault the trial judge with failing to discern whether the State’s race-neutral reasons were overcome by rebuttal evidence and argument never presented.' The state appellate court thus concluded that, because 'Pitchford failed to provide any argument concerning pretext during the Batson hearing[,] it '[would] not entertain those arguments now.'"

The state will have 180 days to set a new trial for Pitchford, unless the state appeals Mills' decision, which could delay the new trial if the order stands. Pitchford will remain in prison for the time being.

Pitchford had sought post-conviction relief again in 2015, but that, too, was denied in 2017.

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Prosecutor also tried Curtis Flowers six times for murder

The district attorney who prosecuted Pitchford's case, Doug Evans, is the same man who prosecuted Curtis Flowers, who was accused of the 1996 slayings of four people at a furniture store in Winona.

Evans was first elected in 1992 as district attorney for seven counties in north Mississippi: Attala, Carroll, Choctaw, Grenada, Montgomery, Webster and Winston counties.

Flowers was tried for the same crime six times. He was first convicted and sentenced to death in 1997 for the murder of Bertha Tardy. Three years later, the state Supreme Court overturned that conviction, citing serious prosecutorial errors in the trial. In that trial, the jury was all white.

In 1999, Flowers was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Derrick "BoBo" Stewart. The state Supreme Court struck down that conviction, again citing prosecutorial misconduct. Eleven of the 12 jurors were white.

In 2004, Flowers was convicted of all four murders and was sentenced to death for a third time. Again, 11 of the 12 jurors were white. That conviction was reversed because the state Supreme Court found that Evans discriminated against Black potential jurors during the jury selection.

Flowers' fourth trial, in 2007, ended in a hung jury and a mistrial was declared. Seven of the jurors were white and five were Black, split along the color line, with Black jurors voting to acquit Flowers.

His fifth trial, in 2008, also resulted in a hung jury, with nine white jurors and three Black jurors. Eleven voted for Flowers' conviction.

In 2010, Flowers was tried for a sixth time. The jury was comprised of 11 white people and one Black person. He was convicted and sentenced to death for a fourth time. That conviction was upheld on appeal but the U.S. Supreme Court asked the state Supreme Court to reexamine its findings.

After the Mississippi appellate court decided there was no error, the U.S. Supreme Court took up Flowers' case and in 2019 ruled that the trial court had allowed racial discrimination during the jury selection process.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote for the majority, said, "The State’s relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals strongly suggests that the State wanted to try Flowers before a jury with as few black jurors as possible, and ideally before an all-white jury."

Ironically, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who is Black, was one of two justices who dissented in Flowers' case. Neil Gorsuch was the second. Thomas also was the only Black justice at the time of the decision.

The state Attorney General's office in 2020 declined to prosecute Flowers a seventh time after Evans turned the case over to the state, leading to Flowers' release from prison. Evans did not seek reelection this year and resigned in June without completing his final term.

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This article originally appeared on Hattiesburg American: MS death row inmate Terry Pitchford murder conviction overturned