Entries tagged with “Curtis Flowers”
What to Know Series
,Jul 21, 2026
What to Know: Prosecutorial Misconduct and the Death Penalty
DPI’s “What to Know” series examines capital punishment from multiple angles, one topic at a time. Each installment provides essential facts and data on specific aspects of the death penalty. Why it matters: More than 600 capital convictions or death sentences have been overturned or led to exonerations because of prosecutorial misconduct, and researchers say the true scope of the problem is likely far greater. DPI has identified more than 600 instances in which a capital conviction or death…
Dec 19, 2025
U.S. Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Mississippi Death Penalty Case Alleging Race Based Jury Discrimination
The U.S Supreme Court announced on December 15, 2025, that it will hear the appeal of Mississippi death-sentenced prisoner Terry Pitchford, who has argued his constitutional rights were violated because of race discrimination during jury selection. Mr. Pitchford was sentenced to death nearly two decades ago for his role in the shooting death of Reuben Britt. At the center of Mr. Pitchford’s case is Doug Evans, a Mississippi district attorney whose conduct has drawn repeated scrutiny. DA Evans…
Upcoming Executions
,May 08, 2025
New Analysis: Capital Cases Overturned At Least Four Times Illustrate How Pervasive Prosecutorial Misconduct Contributes to High Cost of Death Penalty
The single most common outcome for a death sentence in the modern era is for it to be reversed on appeal due to a constitutional violation. Most people whose sentences are reversed get resentenced to life in prison or less, but some prosecutors persist in seeking new death sentences even after multiple reversals. A Death Penalty Information Center analysis of the 14 people sentenced to death four or more times for the same crime finds that prosecutorial misconduct, including racial bias…
Mar 28, 2025
“He Looks a Little Like the Defendant”: A Closer Look at the History of Racial Bias in Jury Selection
As closing arguments of his trial began in Johnston County, North Carolina, Hasson Bacote watched as Assistant District Attorney Gregory Butler urged the jury to sentence him to death. Mr. Bacote, a Black man, had been convicted of fatally shooting 18-year-old Anthony Surles during a robbery when Mr. Bacote was just 21 years old. Mr. Bacote admitted he had fired a single shot out of a trailer, but said he did not know that he hit anyone. “Hasson Bacote is a thug: cold-blooded and without…
Feb 20, 2025
Article of Interest: New Equal Justice Initiative Report Shines a Spotlight on Historic Patterns of Jury Discrimination and the Role of Non-Diverse Juries in Wrongful Convictions
A new report from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), Unreliable Verdicts: Racial Bias and Wrongful Convictions, explores the history of racial bias in jury selection in the United States, including the last 40 years of racially-discriminatory preemptory jury strikes, and highlights the growing body of research showing that jury bias is reduced and the deliberative process enhanced when juries are more diverse. Looking at the pool of documented death penalty…
Issues
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 the…
Issues
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 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…
Issues
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 vote. Evans came under national scrutiny for…
Issues
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 retrial. “We are extremely thankful to see Sherwood walk out of prison a free…
Issues
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 that his trial prosecutor, an…
Issues
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 found. EJI’s report, Race and the Jury: Illegal Discrimination in Jury Selection, released online July 27, 2021, places the continuing illegal exclusion of jurors of color in its historical context as “a continuing legacy of our history of racial injustice,”…
Issues
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 committed. In an interview that aired October 14, 2020, Flowers said he survived the ordeal with the unbending support of…
Issues
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 exonerated. On September 4, 2020, nearly 23 years after he was first questionably convicted of a quadruple murder in Winona, Mississippi, the Mississippi Attorney General’s office dropped all charges against Flowers and a Montgomery…
Issues
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 persisted. Studies have consistently found racial disparities at nearly every stage of the capital punishment process, from policing and charging practices, to jury selection, to jury verdicts, to which cases result in executions. Those patterns of discriminatory sentencing and executions — and particularly…
Issues
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’ case. Evans has been the driving force in Flowers’ case for more than 20 years, personally prosecuting Flowers (pictured, right, with defense co-counsel Henderson Hill)…
Issues
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 row. In July 1996, four employees of a white-owned furniture store in Winona, Mississippi…
Issues
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 Fifth Circuit Court District, asks the…
Issues
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 in six trials in which he has prosecuted Flowers for…
Issues
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 result of race discrimination in jury selection in his case. Justice Samuel Alito…
Issues
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 Selection. Pre-Oral Argument Summary Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Giovanni Flowers has been tried six times for a quadruple murder in Winona, Mississippi. His first three trials were reversed because of…
Issues
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 Supreme Court decision barring the use of…
Issues
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 Court District Attorney Doug Evans…
Issues
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. Earlier this year, the Supreme…