The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review whether a pros­e­cu­tor with a long his­to­ry of racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry jury-selec­tion prac­tices uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly struck black jurors in the tri­al of Mississippi death-row pris­on­er Curtis Giovanni Flowers (pic­tured). On November 2, 2018, the Court grant­ed cer­tio­rari in the Flowers’s case on the ques­tion of “[w]hether the Mississippi Supreme Court erred in how it applied Batson v. Kentucky,” the land­mark 1986 Supreme Court deci­sion bar­ring the use of dis­cre­tionary strikes to remove jurors on the basis of race. 

Flowers has been tried six times for a noto­ri­ous 1996 quadru­ple mur­der in Winona, Mississippi. He was pros­e­cut­ed each time by Doug Evans, the District Attorney in Mississippi’s Fifth Circuit Court District since 1992. Flowers was con­vict­ed by all-white or near­ly all-white juries based on ques­tion­able cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence and the tes­ti­mo­ny of a jail­house infor­mant (who has since recant­ed) that Flowers had con­fessed to the mur­ders. Court plead­ings and the American Public Media (APM) pod­cast series, In the Dark, have cast doubt upon much of the evi­dence in the case, and a promi­nent pathol­o­gist who exam­ined the autop­sy reports and crime scene pho­to­graph has dis­put­ed the prosecution’s the­o­ry that the mur­der was com­mit­ted by a single perpetrator.

In the Dark con­duct­ed a study of jury selec­tion in the Fifth Circuit Court District dur­ing the 26-year peri­od from 1992 to 2017 in which Evans was District Attorney, ana­lyz­ing pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al strikes or accep­tances of more than 6,700 jurors in 225 tri­als. APM found that through­out Evans’s tenure, pros­e­cu­tors struck prospec­tive black jurors at near­ly 4½ times the rate of white prospec­tive jurors. In Flowers’s case, Evans struck near­ly all of the African-American jurors in each tri­al. In his first three tri­als, the Mississippi Supreme Court over­turned Flowers’s con­vic­tions because of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, with courts find­ing that Evans had vio­lat­ed Batson in two of those tri­als. The fourth and fifth tri­als end­ed in mis­tri­als. In the sixth tri­al, in June 2010, Evans accept­ed the first qual­i­fied African-American poten­tial juror and then struck the five remain­ing African Americans in the jury pool. Flowers chal­lenged the prosecution’s jury strikes on appeal, but the Mississippi Supreme Court, over the dis­sents of three jus­tices, reject­ed his claim. In June 2016, the United States Supreme Court vacat­ed the state court’s rul­ing and returned the case to the Mississippi Supreme Court to recon­sid­er the issue in light of the Court’s deci­sion one month ear­li­er in Foster v. Chatman, find­ing that pros­e­cu­tors in a Georgia cap­i­tal case had uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly strick­en jurors because they were black. However, over the dis­sents of three jus­tices, the Mississippi Supreme Court again affirmed, writ­ing that the pri­or adju­di­ca­tions that Evans had already twice vio­lat­ed Batson ​“do not under­mine Evans’ race neu­tral rea­sons” for strik­ing black jurors in the sixth tri­al and that ​“the his­tor­i­cal evi­dence of past dis­crim­i­na­tion … does not alter our analy­sis.” The U.S. Supreme Court has not yet set a date for oral argu­ment in the case.

(Jeff Amy, High court to hear Mississippi case on juror dis­crim­i­na­tion, Associated Press, November 2, 2018; Madeleine Baran and Parker Yesko, Supreme Court agrees to hear Curtis Flowers appeal, APM Reports, November 2, 2018; Jerry Mitchell, US Supreme Court will hear death row inmate Curtis Flowers’ review, Mississippi Clarion Register, November 2, 2018; Will Craft, Mississippi D.A. has long his­to­ry of strik­ing many blacks from juries, APM Reports, June 12, 2018; Jerry Mitchell, Is Curtis Flowers inno­cent? Pathologist thinks mul­ti­ple killers behind quadru­ple mur­der, Mississippi Clarion Register, August 2, 2018.) See Supreme Court, Race, Prosecutorial Misconduct, and Innocence.

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