Pitchford v. Cain · ¶2
Held: The Mississippi Supreme Court unreasonably applied the clearly established Batson precedents and unreasonably determined that Pitch- ford waived his opportunity to rebut the prosecutor's asserted race- neutral reasons for the peremptory strikes of four black prospective jurors. Pp. 398–401. (a) “[T]he job of enforcing Batson rests first and foremost with trial judges.” Flowers v. Mississippi, 588 U. S. 284, 302. The bedrock principle that a party ordinarily must raise an objection in the trial court in order to preserve the issue for appeal applies in the Batson context. See Ford v. Georgia, 498 U. S. 411, 423. But here, the Mississippi trial court erroneously omitted Batson's third step: The trial court did not afford Pitchford's counsel a sufficient opportunity to rebut the prosecutor's proffered race-neutral reasons for striking the four black jurors and never determined…Read in context ›
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