2026年5月28日 / 美国东部时间上午11:58 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
华盛顿讯 —— 美国最高法院周四作出裁决，支持来自密西西比州的一名黑人死囚，该囚犯在庭审前指控陪审团遴选过程中存在种族歧视。
最高法院以5票赞成、4票反对的投票结果支持特里·皮奇福德，首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨和布雷特·卡瓦诺大法官与三名自由派大法官一同加入多数意见阵营。卡瓦诺为本案撰写了多数方意见书，本案案号为皮奇福德诉凯恩案。
克拉伦斯·托马斯、塞缪尔·阿利托、尼尔·戈萨奇和艾米·科尼·巴雷特四位大法官持反对意见。
本案源于2004年密西西比州格林纳达市的一起杂货店抢劫案，两名黑人青少年——皮奇福德和埃里克·巴林斯实施了抢劫，杂货店店主、一名白人男子在事件中遇害。巴林斯开枪射杀了店主鲁本·布里特，但由于案发时他年仅16岁，不符合死刑适用条件，最终被判处20年监禁。
时年18岁的皮奇福德被控一级谋杀罪，州政府寻求判处其死刑。
在密西西比州法院的陪审团遴选过程中，时任地区检察官道格·埃文斯使用了所谓的“无因回避”权，排除了5名潜在黑人陪审员中的4人。皮奇福德的辩护律师根据最高法院1986年的巴茨诉肯塔基州案判决提出了反对。在该案中，最高法院裁定不得基于种族排除潜在陪审员。在该判决及后续案件中，最高法院确立了一系列步骤，供审判法院判断检察官使用无因回避权是否基于种族动机。
埃文斯为排除这四名黑人潜在陪审员给出了多项理由，称其中一人午餐休息后迟到15分钟到庭，另外两人有因暴力犯罪被定罪的兄弟，第四人与皮奇福德情况相似，年轻、未婚且为人父。
审判法官认可了这些具有种族中立性的理由。但皮奇福德的律师辩称，他们未能按照巴茨案三步框架的要求，有机会反驳检方提出的借口式理由。
最终由11名白人陪审员和1名黑人陪审员组成的陪审团裁定皮奇福德一级谋杀罪名成立，并判处其死刑。
埃文斯还曾在备受瞩目的柯蒂斯·弗劳尔斯案中担任首席检察官，弗劳尔斯的谋杀定罪在2019年被最高法院推翻。埃文斯被指控持续从陪审团候选名单中排除潜在的黑人陪审员。
皮奇福德首先向密西西比州最高法院提起上诉，对其定罪和死刑判决提出异议，随后向密西西比州联邦地区法院寻求救济。该法院作出了支持皮奇福德的裁决，推翻了他的定罪。
“审判法院似乎急于推进案件本身，迅速认定这些理由具有种族中立性，随即继续审理，”地区法院在判决中写道。
该判决随后被美国第五巡回上诉法院推翻。但最高法院在本次裁决中支持了皮奇福德，宣布其定罪无效。他可以由州政府重新审判。
“在本案中，无论是由于困惑、疏忽、过于仓促的陪审团遴选程序，还是其他原因，程序都出现了纰漏，尽管皮奇福德的律师多次努力推进并保留巴茨案异议，但审判法院解决巴茨案主张的第三步常规程序始终未能进行，”卡瓦诺写道。
戈萨奇在反对意见中辩称，皮奇福德未能达到联邦法律下寻求救济的高标准。
他表示，法院的意见书“在法律和事实记录两方面都存在错误”。不过，戈萨奇也写道，最高法院的裁决范围狭窄，仅适用于皮奇福德案。
Supreme Court sides with Black death row inmate who alleged racial discrimination in jury selection
May 28, 2026 / 11:58 AM EDT / CBS News
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 based on race.
Evans provided several reasons for excluding the four Black potential jurors in Pitchford’s case, arguing that one returned 15 minutes late to court from a lunch break, two others had brothers convicted of violent crimes and the fourth was similar to Pitchford in that he was young, unmarried and a father.
The trial judge accepted these reasons as race-neutral. But Pitchford’s lawyers argued they were not given the chance to rebut the prosecutors’ reasons as pretextual, as required under Batson’s three-step framework.
A jury composed of 11 White jurors and one Black juror ultimately convicted Pitchford of capital murder and sentenced him to death.
Evans also served as the top prosecutor in the high-profile case of Curtis Flowers, whose murder conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2019. Evans was accused of consistently striking prospective Black jurors from the jury pool.
Pitchford first appealed his conviction and death sentence to the Mississippi Supreme Court, and then sought relief from the federal district court in Mississippi. That court ruled in favor of Pitchford and overturned his conviction.
“The trial court, seemingly eager to proceed to the case itself, quickly deemed the reasons as race-neutral and moved on,” the district court found.
That decision was reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. But in its ruling, the Supreme Court sided with Pitchford, invalidating his conviction. He can be retried by the state.
“In this case, whether due to confusion, oversight, an overly hurried jury selection process, or some other cause, things broke down, and the ordinary trial-court procedure for resolving Batson claims at step three never occurred — notwithstanding the repeated efforts of Pitchford’s counsel to pursue and preserve the Batson objection,” Kavanaugh wrote.
In a dissenting opinion, Gorsuch argued that Pitchford failed to clear the high bar for securing relief under federal law.
The court’s opinion, he said, “errs on the law and the factual record alike.” Still, Gorsuch wrote that the Supreme Court’s decision is a narrow one, applying only to Pitchford.
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