BACKGROUND: See earlier post of this Blog (dated Augist 30, 2019) at the link below, under the heading 'Extraordinary Development.' Curtis Flowers: Mississippi: Extraordinary Development: As reporter Mihit Zaveri reported in yesterday's New York Times: "The Mississippi Supreme Court on Thursday threw out the murder conviction of Curtis Flowers, a black man who has been tried six times for the same crimes, two months after the United States Supreme Court ruled that the prosecutor, who is white, unconstitutionally kept black people off the jury." From Publisher's Note: "Unconstitutional jury selection is nothing new in the American South (as evidenced recently on the pages of this Blog in the Rodricus Crawford Case. (Louisiana); But going to the heart of the Flower's case is the haunting possibility that the man Mississippi Prosecutor Doug Evans is trying so hard to kill is innocent.) Check out this APM story (about a missing gun) by Dave Mann, a senior editor for APM Reports: It's headed: "What happened to the gun? Lots of questions, little evidence in Curtis Flowers."
https://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2019/08/curtis-flowers-mississippi.html
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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "(Judge Joseph) Loper expressed frustration with the prosecution, saying he was troubled that in the four months that the case has been back before the court, the state has taken "absolutely no action" to further its prosecution of Flowers. It also has declined to respond to motions requesting bail, Evan's disqualification and the indictment's dismissal, he said. The judge warned the prosecutor's office Monday that if it continued to ignore court orders in the case, "the state of Mississippi will reap the whirlwind."
PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Defense attorney Rob McDuff repeatedly cited prosecutorial misconduct in his Monday arguments and further accused Evans' office of a "pattern of favors" in securing testimony against Flowers. Among them is an instance in which a man -- with "a criminal record a mile long" -- was accused of aggravated assault against a police officer, he said. The man was granted bail, McDuff said. "This really was a deal with the devil that the district attorney made, and it is the supreme irony that a district attorney agreed to bail in that case with that man's record, but is here opposing the bail application of Curtis Flowers," the defense attorney said. In addition, McDuff said, key state witnesses have recanted their sworn statements in interviews with producers of a podcast. He said Flowers never had a criminal record and has compiled an exemplary record while in prison, and there is evidence pointing to more likely suspects. McDuff played a portion of the podcast in court, during which the key witness tells the interviewer of his testimony that Flowers admitted to the murders in prison: "He ain't never tell me that. That was a lie. ... Everything was all make-believe on my part."
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STORY: "Mississippi judge grants Curtis Flowers bail after six trials end in mistrial or overturned convictions," by Eliott C. McLaughlin and Tina Burnside,published by CNN on December 16, 2019.
GIST: "Curtis Flowers is eligible for bond after spending 23 years in prison, despite six murder trials that either resulted in hung juries or saw their convictions later vacated by higher courts, a Mississippi judge ruled Monday. A black man, Flowers is accused of capital murder in the killing of four people inside a furniture store in Winona, Mississippi. Judge
Joseph Loper set Flowers' bail at $250,000. Defense attorneys had
requested a bail of no more than $25,000, while prosecutors requested
bond be denied. If Flowers can post
the money, he will have to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet while
he waits to learn if he will be tried a seventh time. Prosecutors
allege that Flowers stole a .380-caliber pistol from his uncle's car
and shot Beth Tardy, owner of a local furniture store, and three store
employees execution-style on July 16, 1996. Flowers,
49, once worked for Tardy, and according to prosecutors, killed her
because she fired him after docking his pay for damaging a pair of
batteries. He killed the other three victims to eliminate any witnesses,
prosecutors said. Tardy and two other victims were white; one was
black. The Mississippi Supreme
Court overturned Flowers' first three convictions, two of which resulted
in death sentences, and his next two trials ended in hung juries. Flowers has been on death row for years following guilty verdicts in his sixth trial, but in June the US Supreme Court said Flowers deserved a new trial
because District Attorney Bob Evans, who tried all six cases against
Flowers, engaged in unconstitutional racial discrimination by striking
African American jurors from the panel. In reading the high court's 7-2 decision, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh said prosecutors did not treat white and black prospective jurors equally. "Equal
justice under law requires a criminal trial free of racial
discrimination in the jury selection process," Kavanaugh said, citing
the words inscribed on the Supreme Court building's facade. In November, four black Attala County residents filed a class-action lawsuit against Evans,
who took office in 1992, saying "he and his assistants have employed a
policy, custom, or use of discriminatorily striking black jurors with
peremptory challenges." In the
suit, which also includes the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
and the MacArthur Justice Center, the plaintiffs allege Evans' office
was 6.7 more likely to remove a black juror than a white one, and that
discrepancy was "even more pronounced" when the defendant was black.
Monday's arguments:
Defense
attorney Rob McDuff repeatedly cited prosecutorial misconduct in his
Monday arguments and further accused Evans' office of a "pattern of
favors" in securing testimony against Flowers. Among them is an instance
in which a man -- with "a criminal record a mile long" -- was accused
of aggravated assault against a police officer, he said. The man was
granted bail, McDuff said. "This
really was a deal with the devil that the district attorney made, and it
is the supreme irony that a district attorney agreed to bail in that
case with that man's record, but is here opposing the bail application
of Curtis Flowers," the defense attorney said. In
addition, McDuff said, key state witnesses have recanted their sworn
statements in interviews with producers of a podcast. He said Flowers
never had a criminal record and has compiled an exemplary record while
in prison, and there is evidence pointing to more likely suspects. McDuff
played a portion of the podcast in court, during which the key witness
tells the interviewer of his testimony that Flowers admitted to the
murders in prison: "He ain't never tell me that. That was a lie. ...
Everything was all make-believe on my part."
Assistant
District Attorney Adam Hopper told Loper the prosecution believes it
still has a strong case. The witness statements were recanted to the
media, not to prosecutors, he said, and there is other evidence
implicating Flowers. Included is a
witness who saw Flowers near the car from which the gun was stolen, a
witness who saw Flowers arguing with someone near the furniture store
and gunshot residue on Flowers' hands. Hooper said investigators who
searched Flowers' residence found an empty shoebox for sneakers that
matched shoeprints found at the crime scene. Also, two of the people the
defense claims could be suspects had no motive for the killing, he
said. Hopper requested that bail be denied. Loper
expressed frustration with the prosecution, saying he was troubled that
in the four months that the case has been back before the court, the
state has taken "absolutely no action" to further its prosecution of
Flowers. It also has declined to respond to motions requesting bail,
Evan's disqualification and the indictment's dismissal, he said. The
judge warned the prosecutor's office Monday that if it continued to
ignore court orders in the case, "the state of Mississippi will reap the
whirlwind."
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Read New York Ties columnist David Leonhardt's reaction to the decision to free Curtis Flowers after so much delay: " Justice delayed
There
was no physical evidence — no gun, no fingerprints, no DNA — that
suggested Curtis Flowers killed four people in a Mississippi furniture
store in 1996. There was also no cohesive story that suggested he did, as I wrote last year.
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Yet Flowers spent the last 23 years behind bars for the crime.
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Yesterday, he finally walked out of jail.
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He
still isn’t a free man, because the same prosecutor who put Flowers in
jail could still choose to retry him. But after the Supreme Court
vacated his conviction in June, citing the prosecutor’s blocking of
black jurors, a Mississippi judge yesterday set bail at $250,000. An
anonymous donor posted enough money for Flowers to be set free.
|
His
release is a triumph of justice. It’s also an example of the power of
great journalism; a team of American Public Media reporters, including
Madeleine Baran and Samara Freemark, uncovered multiple holes in the
case and laid them out in a fantastic podcast.
|
But
of course the Flowers case is still largely a triumph of injustice.
Curtis Flowers, who’s 49, has spent almost all of his adult life in
jail. Doug Evans, a Mississippi district attorney, has tried Flowers six
different times, repeatedly going back to court after initial
convictions were thrown out on appeal because of Evans’s misconduct. And
Evans hasn’t yet given up.
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“It’s
been a remarkable day,” Baran told me in an email, “and now the big
question is — Does the state go forward with a seventh trial?”
|
I’m reminded of an Op-Ed that Nina Morrison
of the Innocence Project wrote for The Times last year. “Most
prosecutors are hard-working public servants and committed to fair
play,” she wrote. “But those who break the law and face no consequence
are a stain on their colleagues — and the legal profession.”
|
As Morrison explained, a lack of consequences is the norm for lawbreaking prosecutors:
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| The National Registry of Exonerations, based out of the University of California, Irvine, reports that “official misconduct” — by police, prosecutors or both — was a factor in roughly half of the nearly 2,200 exonerations across the country since 1989. … |
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
