Curtis Flowers Prosecutor Defeated in Bid to Become County Judge

District Attorney Doug Evans, who gained noto­ri­ety for his mis­con­duct in the six tri­al of Curtis Flowers, was defeat­ed November 29, 2022 in his attempt to become a Mississippi Circuit Court judge. In a runoff elec­tion, Winona Municipal Court Judge Alan ​“Devo” Lancaster (pic­tured) defeat­ed Evans for Mississippi Fifth District Circuit Court judge. Based on unof­fi­cial elec­tion results, Lancaster received 70% of the vote while Evans received 30% of the vote.

Evans came under nation­al scruti­ny for his pat­tern of dis­crim­i­na­tion against Black poten­tial jurors, espe­cial­ly in the case of Curtis Flowers. Evans tried Flowers six times for a quadru­ple-mur­der in Winona, Mississippi. Four of the tri­als result­ed in con­vic­tions and death sen­tences imposed by all-white or near­ly all-white juries. Each con­vic­tion was over­turned for pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. The two oth­er tri­als end­ed in hung juries, with every white juror vot­ing to con­vict and every Black juror vot­ing to acquit. 

Flowers’ case was the sub­ject of an APM Reports study and its pod­cast series In the Dark. Reviewing the exer­cise of dis­cre­tionary jury strikes in 225 tri­als between 1992 and 2017, APM Reports dis­cov­ered that dur­ing Evans’ tenure as Mississippi’s Fifth Circuit Court District Attorney, pros­e­cu­tors exer­cised peremp­to­ry strikes to exclude African Americans from jury ser­vice at near­ly 4½ times the rate at which they struck white jurors. At the time of the judi­cial elec­tion, Evans had been dis­trict attor­ney for more than 30 years. 

In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court over­turned Flowers’ con­vic­tion in his sixth tri­al. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writ­ing for the major­i­ty, said that Evans’ had engaged in a ​“relent­less, deter­mined effort to rid the jury of black indi­vid­u­als,” which ​“strong­ly sug­gests that the State want­ed to try Flowers before a jury with as few black jurors as pos­si­ble, and ide­al­ly before an all-white jury.” Kavanaugh wrote, ​“In the six tri­als com­bined, the State struck 41 of the 42 black prospec­tive jurors it could have struck.” In January 2020, Evans vol­un­tar­i­ly recused him­self from Flowers’ case, writ­ing that his ​“con­tin­ued involve­ment will pre­vent the fam­i­lies from obtain­ing jus­tice and from the defen­dant being held respon­si­ble for his actions.”

In September 2020, Flowers was offi­cial­ly exon­er­at­ed when Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who took on the case after Evans’ recusal, dropped charges against him. He spent 23 years wrong­ful­ly impris­oned, most of it on death row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. After his exon­er­a­tion, Flowers stat­ed, ​“Today I am final­ly free from the injus­tice that left me locked in a box for near­ly 23 years.” Flowers is suing Evans, along with a for­mer inves­ti­ga­tor from Evans’ office and two high­way patrol offi­cers, for offi­cial mis­con­duct and false impris­on­ment. U.S. District Court Judge Neal Biggers Jr. has stayed the case until May 2023.