Entries tagged with “Curtis Flowers”
Policy Issues
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Dec 20, 2023
Batson Relief for Another Mississippi Prisoner Prosecuted by Doug Evans
On December 12, 2023 U.S. District Judge Michael P. Mills overturned Terry Pitchford’s death sentence and ordered Mississippi to retry him in 6 months or release him from custody. Judge Mills found that the original trial judge failed to allow the defense to properly challenge the exclusion of Black jurors by now-retired District Attorney Doug Evans, the same prosecutor who prosecuted Curtis Flowers. “This court cannot ignore the notion that Pitchford was seemingly given no chance to rebut…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,United States Supreme Court
,Jul 12, 2023
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…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Dec 13, 2022
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…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Sep 30, 2021
Sherwood Brown Exonerated in Mississippi, 186th Death-Row Exoneration Since 1973
Sherwood Brown has been exonerated of the charges that sent him to death row in Mississippi in 1995 for a triple murder he did not commit. On August 24, 2021, DeSoto County Circuit Court Judge Jimmy McClure granted a prosecution motion to dismiss charges against Brown (pictured after his release), who was released later that day after having spent 26 years on the state’s death row or facing the prospects of a capital…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Race
,Sep 13, 2021
Death-Row Exoneree Curtis Flowers Sues Mississippi Prosecutor Who Prosecuted Him Six Times
Former Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Flowers (pictured), who was exonerated in 2020, is suing the officials whose misconduct led to his arrest and repeated wrongful conviction. Flowers was tried six times and spent 23 years wrongfully incarcerated for a quadruple murder in a white-owned furniture store in Winona, Mississippi. In a complaint filed September 3, 2021 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, Flowers alleges…
Policy Issues
Race
,Aug 03, 2021
Equal Justice Initiative Releases Report on Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection
Racial bias in jury selection is compromising the “credibility, reliability, and integrity of the legal system,” and its effects are especially pronounced in death penalty cases, a new report from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) has…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Oct 20, 2020
‘Keep Your Head Up and Don’t Give Up’ — Exoneree Curtis Flowers Gives an Illuminating First Interview to the In the Dark Podcast
In his first interview since his September 24, 2020 exoneration, former Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Flowers (pictured) spoke with In the Dark podcast host and lead reporter Madeleine Baran about his 24-year journey to freedom after having being framed, tried six times, sent to death row and finally freed for a murder everyone involved knew full well he had never…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Sep 08, 2020
Curtis Flowers Exonerated in Mississippi After Attorney General Drops All Charges
After six trials marred by prosecutorial misconduct and racial prejudice, drawing a scathing rebuke from the U.S. Supreme Court, former Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Flowers (pictured with the ankle monitor that had kept him under house arrest) has been…
Policy Issues
Race
,Sentencing Data
,Jan 21, 2020
DPIC Analysis: Racial Disparities Persisted in U.S. Death Sentences and Executions in 2019
A DPIC analysis of executions and new death sentences in 2019 has found that even as death penalty usage declined across the United States, racial disparities in its application…
Policy Issues
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Jan 08, 2020
Controversial Mississippi Prosecutor Recuses Himself from Further Involvement in Curtis Flowers’ Case
After having been rebuked by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2019 for his pattern of racially biased jury selection in the capital prosecutions of Curtis Flowers and sued in federal court to bar future race-based jury strikes, Mississippi prosecutor Doug Evans has voluntarily recused himself from future involvement in Flowers’…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Dec 16, 2019
Mississippi Judge Frees Curtis Flowers on Bail After Six Trials and 23 Years in Jail
A Mississippi trial judge has released Curtis Flowers on $250,000 bail, while prosecutors decide whether to attempt to try him a seventh time for a quadruple murder he has long maintained he did not commit. Flowers (pictured right, with defense co-counsel Henderson Hill) was freed on December 16, 2019, after an anonymous donor posted his bond. He had spent the last 23 years in jail, most of it on death…
Policy Issues
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Nov 19, 2019
Civil Rights Groups File Class Action Lawsuit Against Mississippi Prosecutor Over Systemic Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection
Two civil rights organizations have filed a class action lawsuit against Mississippi prosecutor Doug Evans (pictured) seeking an end to what they describe as a “policy, custom, and usage of racially discriminatory jury selection.” The lawsuit, filed by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the MacArthur Justice Center on November 18, 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi on behalf of black prospective jurors in Mississippi’s…
Policy Issues
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,United States Supreme Court
,Jun 21, 2019
Supreme Court Vacates Conviction in Mississippi Death Penalty Case Finding Race Discrimination in Jury Selection
Finding that a Mississippi prosecutor had intentionally struck black jurors in an attempt to empanel as white a jury as possible, the United States Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of death-row prisoner Curtis Giovanni Flowers. The Court’s 7 – 2 decision on June 21, 2019, found that Mississippi’s Fifth Circuit Court District Attorney Doug Evans had undertaken extraordinary efforts to prevent African Americans from serving as jurors…
Policy Issues
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,United States Supreme Court
,Mar 21, 2019
Justices Express Concern About “Disturbing History” of Race Bias in Mississippi Death Penalty Case
The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to grant a new trial to Curtis Flowers (pictured), an African-American death-row prisoner tried six times for the same murders by a white Mississippi prosecutor who struck nearly every black juror from service in each of the trials. During oral argument in Flowers v. Mississippi on March 20, 2019, eight justices expressed concern that Flowers had been denied a fair trial as a…
Policy Issues
Race
,United States Supreme Court
,Mar 15, 2019
Flowers v. Mississippi: Oral Argument Briefing
On June 21, 2019, the United States Supreme Court vacated Curtis Flowers’ conviction in a 7 – 2 decision. For more information about the opinion, read DPIC’s summary here. See also Supreme Court Vacates Conviction in Mississippi Death Penalty Case Finding Race Discrimination in Jury…
Policy Issues
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,United States Supreme Court
,Nov 06, 2018
Supreme Court to Review Mississippi Death-Penalty Case in Which Prosecutor Systematically Excluded Black Jurors
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…
Policy Issues
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Jun 15, 2018
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…
Policy Issues
Race
,United States Supreme Court
,Jun 21, 2016
U.S. Supreme Court Orders Reconsideration of Three Cases in Light of Jury Selection Decision
The U.S. Supreme Court granted writs of certiorari in three jury discrimination cases on June 20, vacating each of them and directing state courts in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana to reconsider the issue in light of the Court’s recent decision in Foster v. Chatman. Two of the petitioners, Curtis Flowers of Mississippi and Christopher Floyd of Alabama, are currently on death row. The third, Jabari Williams, was convicted in Louisiana of second-degree murder.