The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 5-4 in favor of a Black death-row inmate in Mississippi who argued that the racial makeup of the jury that convicted him created a bias against him. 

Terry Pitchford was sentenced to death for his role in the killing of a grocery store owner over 20 years ago. In 2023, a district court judge overturned his conviction, ruling that the trial judge had not allowed Pitchford's attorneys enough chance to argue that the prosecution was improperly dismissing Black jurors, according to the Associated Press. 

Doug Evans, who is now retired, was the prosecutor in the case, and had been accused in the past of dismissing Black jurors for discriminatory reasons. In Pitchford's case, he had excused four other Black jurors. 

The district court judge who overturned Pitchford's conviction cited Evan's actions in prior cases as one of the reasons for his ruling. 

Pitchford, now 40, and a friend allegedly robbed a Crossroads Grocery in northern Mississippi in 2004. The friend shot the owner, Reuben Britt, three times, but was ineligible for the death penalty because he was under 18.