STUDY: Local Mississippi Prosecutors Struck Black Jurors at More than Four Times the Rate of Whites

A new study shows that the Mississippi District Attorney’s office that has pros­e­cut­ed Curtis Flowers for cap­i­tal mur­der six times — strik­ing almost all black jurors in each tri­al — has dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly exclud­ed African Americans from jury ser­vice for more than a quar­ter cen­tu­ry. Reviewing the exer­cise of dis­cre­tionary jury strikes in 225 tri­als between 1992 and 2017, American Public Media Reports dis­cov­ered that dur­ing the tenure of Mississippi’s Fifth Circuit Court District Attorney Doug Evans (pic­tured) pros­e­cu­tors have exer­cised peremp­to­ry strikes to exclude African Americans from jury ser­vice at near­ly 4½ times the rate at which they struck white jurors. 

APM Reports col­lect­ed and ana­lyzed data on more than 6,700 jurors called for jury ser­vice in the the Fifth District. Its study — which was reviewed before its release by a sta­tis­tics expert and two law pro­fes­sors who had con­duct­ed pri­or jury-strike stud­ies — found that Fifth District pros­e­cu­tors struck 50 per­cent of all eli­gi­ble black jurors com­pared to only 11 per­cent of eli­gi­ble whites. Looking at poten­tial­ly race-neu­tral fac­tors raised dur­ing juror ques­tion­ing, APM Reports found that pros­e­cu­tors were still far more lik­ley to strike black jurors than sim­i­lar­ly sit­u­at­ed white jurors (click here to enlarge graph). Controlling for these fac­tors, the study found that the odds pros­e­cu­tors would strike a black juror were six times greater than the odds that they would strike a white juror. 

APM Reports pre­pared the study in con­nec­tion with its acclaimed pod­cast series In the Dark, which this sea­son focus­es on the Flowers case. Evans’ office has been scru­ti­nized for alleged race-relat­ed abus­es of pow­ers dur­ing the course of Flowers’ six tri­als for the mur­der of four fur­ni­ture store employ­ees. Flowers has con­sis­tent­ly pro­fessed his inno­cence. In his first three tri­als, Flowers was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death by all-white or near­ly all-white juries. In each of these cas­es, the state Supreme Court over­turned the con­vic­tions and ordered new tri­als. Just before the sec­ond tri­al, Flowers’ par­ents’ house burned down. Shortly after­wards, his moth­er was told of a threat made by a white res­i­dent that, ​“If they let that n — – go, anoth­er house is going to burn.” 

Jurors dead­locked in Flowers’ fourth and fifth tri­als, split along racial lines. All the white jurors vot­ed for death in both of those tri­als. Only one black juror served on the sixth jury, and Flowers was sen­tenced to death in that trial. 

Although it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to exclude jurors from ser­vice based on race, the prac­tice is ubiq­ui­tous in many juris­dic­tions that heav­i­ly use the death penal­ty. Over the course of 332 crim­i­nal tri­als in CaddoParish, Louisiana in the decade from 2003 – 2012, pros­e­cu­tors struck black jurors at more than triple the rate of oth­er jurors, approx­i­mate­ly the same dis­pro­por­tion­ate rate at which black jurors were struck in 35 cas­es result­ing in death sen­tences in South Carolina in the fif­teen years between 1997 – 2012. In 173 cap­i­tal cas­es tried over a twen­ty-year peri­od in North Carolina, and in more than 300 cap­i­tal tri­als over more than two decades in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, pros­e­cu­tors struck black jurors twice as fre­quent­ly as oth­er jurors. Most recent­ly, in Georgia, Johnny Gates, who was sen­tenced to death in Columbus, Georgia in 1977, has chal­lenged his con­vic­tion with evi­dence that his pros­e­cu­tors struck every black juror they could in the sev­en cap­i­tal tri­als they pros­e­cut­ed between 1976 and 1979, empan­el­ing all-white juries in six of those cases.