Policy Issues
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Dec 20, 2023
Batson Relief for Another Mississippi Prisoner Prosecuted by Doug Evans
On December 12, 2023 U.S. Dis…
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Dec 20, 2023
On December 12, 2023 U.S. Dis…
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Nov 19, 2019
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…
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Jan 08, 2020
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
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Sep 08, 2020
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 monito…
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Dec 13, 2022
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…
Innocence
,Race
,Sep 13, 2021
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…
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,United States Supreme Court
,Jul 12, 2023
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 Blac…
Race
,Sentencing Data
,Jan 21, 2020
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 persisted. Studies have
Race
,Aug 03, 2021
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…
Race
,United States Supreme Court
,Mar 15, 2019
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
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,United States Supreme Court
,Mar 21, 2019
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…
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Dec 16, 2019
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. Flower…
Innocence
,Sep 30, 2021
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 Jim…
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Jun 15, 2018
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 Afr…
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,United States Supreme Court
,Nov 06, 2018
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
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,United States Supreme Court
,Jun 21, 2019
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 G…
Race
,United States Supreme Court
,Jun 21, 2016
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 decisi…
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Oct 20, 2020
In his first interview since his September 24, 2020 exoneration, former Mississippi death-row prison…