A Supreme Court Ruling That Gets Race Right: Stephen L. Carter

All of us like confounding our detractors, and that’s what the United States Supreme Court accomplished on Thursday, when it surprised many observers by ruling 5-4 in favor of a Black convicted murderer, who claimed that the prosecutor at his trial intentionally used peremptory challenges to create a nearly all-White jury.

The defendant, Terry Pitchford, was involved in the robbery of a grocery store where the owner was shot and killed. A Mississippi jury convicted Pitchford of murder and sentenced him to death. He claims that an accomplice did the actual shooting. Nevertheless, he was there, and he had ...