Terry Pitchford, a man on Mississippi’s death row, will remain incarcerated after a federal appellate court ruled that a previous decision to overturn his conviction was made in error. Pitchford had been convicted of capital murder in 2006 for the 2004 killing of Reuben Britt during an armed robbery at a grocery store in Grenada County.
The victim, Britt, was reportedly shot with two different firearms, one of which was later identified as Britt’s own. Pitchford was linked to the crime after investigators found Britt’s gun in a vehicle seen outside his house, which had been involved in an earlier attempted robbery of the same grocery store.
In 2023, Pitchford’s conviction and death sentence were overturned by a federal district court, which ordered a new trial. However, the 39-year-old remained on death row while Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch appealed the decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
On Friday, the Fifth Circuit Court reinstated Pitchford’s conviction and sentence, concluding that the lower court had erred in its consideration of the racial composition of the jury. The appeal centered around the 2010 ruling, where Pitchford’s defense argued that the trial court had improperly excluded four Black jurors.
The trial judge had accepted the prosecution’s explanation that the jurors were dismissed for reasons unrelated to race, allowing for an all-white jury with one Black juror.
Pitchford admitted to participating in the robbery but denied shooting Britt, claiming his accomplice, Eric Bullin, was responsible for the fatal shots. Bullin is currently serving a 60-year sentence for his role in the crime.
