Pitchford v. Cain · ¶20

As this Court has stated, “America's trial judges operate at the front lines of American justice,” and “the job of enforcing Batson rests first and foremost with trial judges.” Flowers v. Mississippi, 588 U. S. 284, 302 (2019). But here, as the U. S. District Court explained, the Mississippi trial court erroneously omitted Batson's third step: In particular, 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 whether the prosecutor's stated reasons were pretextual. And as the U. S. District Court further stated, the Mississippi Supreme Court's conclusion that Pitchford waived his opportunity to rebut the prosecutor's proffered race-neutral reasons was unreasonable.

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