Doug Evans, the District Attorney Who Prosecuted Curtis Flowers Six Times, Retires

Doug Evans, the District Attorney who tried death row exoneree Curtis Flowers for mur­der six times, is retir­ing. Mr. Flowers received four death sen­tences, but each con­vic­tion was over­turned when courts found that Evans had ille­gal­ly exclud­ed Black jurors from the jury pool.

Mr. Flowers’ final con­vic­tion and death sen­tence was over­turned by the U.S. Supreme Court in Flowers v. Mississippi. The Court found that Evans had uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly struck Black jurors from the venire because of their race, con­trary to the 1986 U.S. Supreme Court’s hold­ing in Batson v. Kentucky. In the 7 – 2 deci­sion, Justice Kavanaugh wrote, “[t]he State’s relent­less, deter­mined effort to rid the jury of black indi­vid­u­als 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.”

Mr. Evans’ retire­ment coin­cides with the Supreme Court’s deci­sion not to review the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Tony Clark, anoth­er Black man sen­tenced to death in Mississippi, who has also alleged that the pros­e­cu­tor in his case dis­crim­i­nat­ed against Black jurors dur­ing jury selec­tion. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dis­sent­ed from the Court’s denial of review. Justice Sotomayor wrote that “[t]his can only be read as a sig­nal from the Mississippi Supreme Court that it intends to car­ry on with busi­ness as usu­al, no mat­ter what this Court said in Flowers. By allow­ing the same court to make the same mis­takes apply­ing the same stan­dard, this Court acqui­esces in the Mississippi Supreme Court’s non­com­pli­ance. Today, this Court tells the Mississippi Supreme Court that it has called our bluff, and that this Court is unwill­ing to do what is nec­es­sary to defend its own prece­dent. The result is that Flowers will be tooth­less in the very State where it appears to be still so needed.”

Mr. Flowers was first sen­tenced to death in 1997 for a 1996 quadru­ple homi­cide in Montgomery County, Mississippi, by an all-white jury. That con­vic­tion, and his sub­se­quent two con­vic­tions, where he was tried by eleven white jurors and one Black juror, were all over­turned by the Mississippi Supreme Court because Evans had improp­er­ly exclud­ed Black jurors from the jury. Evans, who per­son­al­ly tried each case, con­tin­ued to pros­e­cute Mr. Flowers. In the next two tri­als the jury was unable to reach a unan­i­mous deci­sion about Mr. Flowers’ guilt, split­ting along racial lines. Evans again pros­e­cut­ed Mr. Flowers, and in 2010, a jury com­posed of only one Black juror and eleven white jurors sen­tenced Mr. Flowers to death.

While his legal team appealed this con­vic­tion, American Public Media (APM) inves­ti­gat­ed Mr. Flowers’ case on its pod­cast In the Dark, and uncov­ered addi­tion­al evi­dence of Mr. Flowers’ inno­cence, includ­ing evi­dence point­ing to anoth­er sus­pect and a taped admis­sion from the state’s star wit­ness that he had per­jured him­self dur­ing the trial.

After the U.S. Supreme Court over­turned Mr. Flowers’ 2010 con­vic­tion, Evans made the pub­lic state­ment that ​“It was a ridicu­lous rul­ing … They basi­cal­ly said there was noth­ing wrong with the case and reversed it any­way.” However, Evans vol­un­tar­i­ly recused him­self from Mr. Flowers’ case at that point, and the state Attorney General’s office sub­se­quent­ly dropped all charges against him, offi­cial­ly exon­er­at­ing him after 23 years of impris­on­ment. He has since received $500,000 from the coun­ty for more than two decades of wrongful imprisonment.

A 2018 study by APM revealed 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. Despite both this report and his record in the Flowers case, Evans con­tin­ued to run the office with­out over­sight. He ran for re-elec­tion unop­posed just months after the Supreme Court deci­sion. A law­suit against him was dis­missed on pro­ce­dur­al grounds, and bar com­plaints against him for this dis­crim­i­na­to­ry behav­ior have not result­ed in any known discipline.

DPIC’s Prosecutorial Accountability project has uncov­ered at least 68 death sen­tences which were over­turned due to jury discrimination.