Tom Mangold, a correspondent with the the British Broadcasting Corporation, recently traveled to Winona, Mississippi to investigate the case of Curtis Flowers.  The story came to his attention through this blog, but I have made little attempt to convince Mr. Mangold to see the story my way.  As you would expect from an investigative reporter, he took nothing for granted going in.  Here is a transcript of Mangold’s report in its entirety.

Mississippi Smoldering

Crossing Continents:  Mississippi

Reporter:  Tom Mangold

Producer:  Bill Law

26 November 2009

In Mississippi, a man accused of murder has spent thirteen years in prison on remand. And he’s still inside.

ATTORNEY RAY CARTER: Curtis is a black man in America, a black man in Mississippi, a black man in the South.

LYDIA CHASSANIOL: There has been an effort by some to say that there was a racial motivation. I would like to remind the people who are interested in this case that there was a black man murdered as well.

REPORTER: Curtis Flowers is a black man charged with the murder of four people, three white and one black. Next year, incredibly, he will face his sixth trial. Race has played a significant part in the judicial stand-off that is preventing justice being done. One year into the Obama presidency what does the Flowers case tell us about the dream of a post-racial America? (more…)

End the year with a gift to Friends of Justice!

In the final hours of 2009, I hope you’ll include Friends of Justice in your year-end giving.  If you haven’t already made a generous contribution to support our unique mission, please donate now!

Thank you, we appreciate your support. 

Yours for Justice,
Alan Bean

Several readers have been asking about the current status of the Troy Davis case.  In August, the Supreme Court called for an evidentiary hearing in connection with Davis’s innocence claims and U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr. was appointed to oversee that process. 

Judge Moore has been uncertain how to proceed.  The Supreme Court has never ruled that the Constitution recognizes a “free-standing innocence claim”; therefore Moore isn’t sure what law applies to the Davis case and is asking for guidance.  This explains, in part at least, why, four months after the Supreme Court’s unprecedented announcement, the evidentiary hearing still hasn’t been scheduled.

Fortunately, Bill Rankin of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has just published an excellent summary of the case that contains some exciting new information.  Here is an extended excerpt from the relevant portion of the article.

Davis’ legal team recently provided Moore with a new affidavit from a Savannah woman who said a key prosecution witness, Sylvester “Redd” Coles, told her he was the one who actually shot and killed Officer Mark Allen MacPhail.

Jason Ewart, a member of Davis’ legal team, said Davis is eager to finally present his recantation testimony in court for the first time. But the lawyer acknowledged they “are working on a blank slate. We’re really now talking about what the law should be here.”

Ewart said Davis’ new evidence is powerful. “It essentially eviscerates the evidence presented at trial and presents evidence that wasn’t available at that time,” he said.

In court filings, Davis’ lawyers continue to contend the actual killer was Coles. In a prior interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Coles denied being the triggerman.

Coles went to police shortly after MacPhail was shot dead in a Burger King parking lot. MacPhail, a 27-year-old former U.S. Army ranger, had rushed to the scene responding to the wails of Larry Young, who was being pistol-whipped.

Prosecutors said Davis was with Coles when Coles began harassing Young, demanding Young to give him a beer. Davis then began hitting Young with his pistol. After arriving at the scene, MacPhail was shot before he could unholster his firearm.

When Coles told police Davis was at the scene, Davis became the prime suspect.

At the 1991 trial, nine prosecution witnesses testified they saw Davis at the scene, saw him shoot MacPhail or were told by Davis he killed MacPhail. But since then, seven of these witnesses have recanted, saying police pressured them into falsely fingering Davis.

Coles is one of the two key witnesses who has not recanted his testimony. Since the trial, Coles has confessed to five separate friends and family members that he killed MacPhail, said a court filing by Davis’ legal team.

The most recent person to come forward is Quiana Glover, a Savannah woman who said she was at a friend’s house in June when Coles told her he killed MacPhail, according to her affidavit. Glover said she had known Coles since she was a young girl.

According to Glover’s affidavit, a woman who was with Coles at the party told him he was drinking too much and to slow down. “This [expletive] is killing me,” Coles replied.

When Glover said she asked what Coles was talking about, he said, “Man, looky here, I’m the one who killed that [expletive]. But if they want to hold Troy’s [expletive] then let them hold him. Besides, I’ve got kids to raise.”

Glover said that several days later she was at a sports bar when she saw a married couple, Hollis Mitchell and Alicia Blakely, wearing “I Am Troy Davis” T-shirts and asking people to sign a petition they were going to give to the local district attorney.

Glover said she signed the petition and then, after hesitating, told them what she said Coles had told her, her affidavit said. She gave them her cell phone number and was later contacted by an investigator for Davis’ legal team, who took her sworn statement.

Glover did not return phone calls last week seeking comment.

In a telephone interview on Thursday, Blakely recounted meeting Glover at the sports bar.

“She came up to me and said she had something to tell me,” Blakely said. “She said, ‘I know who killed that police officer.’’’

After Glover repeated what she said Coles had told her, Blakely said, “I couldn’t believe it. I was like, oh, my gosh, we’ve got to get that out there.”

Friends of Justice has been following this case closely, partly because it overlaps considerably with the case of Curtis Flowers in Mississippi.  The manipulation of eyewitness testimony is a major feature of both cases.  Flowers and Davis are unusually egregious examples of a problem afflicting the criminal justice system nationwide.  Not only do police officers and investigators coerce “eyewitnesses” into cooperating with the government’s theory of the case; there is growing evidence that even sincere and well-intentioned eye-witness testimony if far less reliable than is generally believed. 

I will have more to say on this aspect of the two cases as events unfold.

Sheriff Earl Patridge had a problem.  Seven black agitators, five of them beaten within an inch of their lives, were locked in his jailhouse.  It would take just one complaint and the feds would come sniffing around.  They always did.

Twelve hours after the arrest at the Winona Trailways Depot a passel of black agitators from Greenwood had come looking for their friends.  The sheriff’s men arrested Lawrence Guyot, a powerfully built civil rights leader, and used every trick in the book to goad the big man into violent resistance.  Guyot wouldn’t call his captors “Sir” but refused to take the bait.  Patridge’s men beat their prisoner mercilessly.  One officer pulled out a blow torch and threatened to burn off the black man’s testicles.  When a physician warned that they would soon have a corpse on their hands the beating finally ended.  Now Guyot was in solitary confinement.  His face was a mass of cuts and bruises and his eyes were swollen shut. (more…)

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has been taking a lot of heat from his conservative colleagues for pardoning a cop-killer, but Radley Balko thinks Haley Barbour, the sitting governor of Mississippi, is the southern politician who needs to be called to account.

Here’s Balko’s summary of the Mississippi governor’s most controversial pardons:

• Bobby Hays Clark, who in 1996 shot his ex-girlfriend in the neck and beat her boyfriend with a broom handle. Clark, who had a previous aggravated assault conviction, was sentenced to 38 years. Barbour pardoned him last year without notifying the family of Clark’s victim.
• Michael David Graham, who in 1989 shot his ex-wife point-blank with a shotgun while she waited at a traffic light. Barbour suspended Graham’s life sentence, and he was released.
• Clarence Jones, who stabbed his ex-girlfriend 22 times in 1992. She had previously filed multiple assault and trespassing charges against him. He was sentenced to life in prison. Barbour pardoned him last year.
• Paul Joseph Warnock, who in 1989 shot his girlfriend in the back of the head as she slept. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1993. Barbour pardoned him last year.
• William James Kimble, convicted and sentenced to life for robbing and murdering an elderly man in 1991.

Radley Balko finds these pardons particularly incongruous in light of some of the folks Barbour has refused to pardon.  (more…)

Shelby County DA Lynda Russell

This is one of those stories that slipped past me.  Thanks to Friend of Justice, James Canup for bringing it to my attention.  AGB

Authorities in the Deep East Texas town of Tenaha have been making the most of Texas forfeiture law.  According to a CNN report,  law enforcement in this town of 1,000 on the Louisiana border raked in $3 million between 2006 and 2008.  Most of the money, you will be surprised to learn, was seized from black and Latino motorists.

Forfeiture law sounds like a good idea.  Law enforcement seizes assets from drug dealers and funnels the filthy lucre into the war on drugs.  The good guys enrich themselves at the expense of the bad guys–who could ask for anything more?

Unfortunately, if you focus your attention on low-status minority drivers, you can forget about probable cause.  Why else would a black or brown individual have more than $20 in his pocket?  Amounts larger than that are clearly drug assets, right?

So you make the guy an offer he can’t refuse.  A Tennessee man was cruising through the Shelby County town a few years ago when the local cops pulled him over–he was doing 37 in a 35 zone (irrefutable evidence of drug dealing in itself).  Roderick Daniels was told that if he forfeited the $8500 they found in his wallet, money laundering charges wouldn’t be pressed. 

Daniels cooperated with the officers, then quietly sued the county.

 Daniels claims he intended to spend the $8500 on a car.  Who would pay cash for a used car, you ask?  Working class folks, that’s who.  I know people  who cash their pay check and then drive around to all the utility companies to pay their bills in cash.  Bank accounts are largely a middle class phenomenon; hard living folk prefer to deal in cash money.

Who knows, maybe Daniels was fresh from a big drug deal; but he doesn’t have to prove his innocence.  (If the picture above is anything to go by, Shelby County DA, Lynda Russell looks pretty suspect herself.)

Here’s the practical result of giving law enforcement a license to print money–motorists from out-of-town are considered guilty until they prove their innocence . . . or kiss the cash in their pockets good-bye.

In March of this year (just before joining staff of The Stars and Stripes) Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune wrote a feature story on Tenaha’s forfeiture frenzy.  “If used properly, it’s a good law-enforcement tool to see that crime doesn’t pay,” John Whitmire, chairman of the Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee, told Witt. “But in this instance, where people are being pulled over and their property is taken with no charges filed and no convictions, I think that’s theft.”

Can we safely assume that law enforcement will make “proper use” of forfeiture laws that can put $3 million in the pockets of a little town like Tenaha?  Whitmire clearly doesn’t think so–he and other Texas politicians have been working to rewrite the law to prevent further abuses.

Witt’s story in the Tribune highlights the work of the Nacogdoches attorney who filed a federal lawsuit on Daniel’s behalf.  David Guillory “combed through Shelby County court records from 2006 to 2008 and discovered nearly 200 cases in which Tenaha police seized cash and property from motorists. In about 50 of the cases,” Witt reports “suspects were charged with drug possession.  But in 147 others, Guillory said the court records showed, police seized cash, jewelry, cell phones and sometimes even automobiles from motorists but never found any contraband or charged them with any crime.”

Guillory was able to contact 40 of the motorists directly.  All but one of them were black. 

Here’s Guillory’s conclusion:

The whole thing is disproportionately targeted toward minorities, particularly African-Americans.  None of these people have been charged with a crime, none were engaged in anything that looked criminal. The sole factor is that they had something that looked valuable.

Tenaha may be the more aggressive at going after forfeiture money than most Texas towns, but the problem on display in this little town are ubiquitous.

This Houston Chronicle piece reveals that “only seven judges in the last decade have faced formal disciplinary action as a result of the nation’s secretive misconduct review process. In that same period,” the article reports, “citizens filed more than 6,000 formal misconduct complaints.”

True, most of these complaints come from irate defendants who didn’t like the customer service they received in the courtroom.  I get letters complaining about judges all the time and few of them involve meaningful allegations. 

Still, are we to believe that only seven complaints over a ten-year period were worthy of review?

The problem, Lise Olsen suggests, is that judges are judging the judges.  Poor black defendants rarely get a jury of their peers but judges always do.  This isn’t exactly like having the fox guard the henhouse; but when Foxy-Loxy has a mouthful of feathers, you want a few chicken’s on the jury. 

Judges are generally good, disciplined, well-intentioned people who take their jobs seriously.  But there are plenty of judges who function as an extension of the prosecutorial arm.  To employ a pro wrestling analogy, some judges work as tag team partners for the US Attorneys Office. 

The Houston Chronicle article is primarily concerned with out-of-the-courtroom behavior like sexual harassment.  A serious matter, no doubt, but I am more concerned with what goes down inside the courtroom.

In fairness, the judges I have observed in the federal system (conservative, liberal, and somewhere in between) have generally been fair.  The tag team phenomenon is most commonly on display in thinly populated counties where due process concerns carry little weight.  When the same judges and prosecutors work together on a daily basis the independence of the judiciary is in jeopardy.

Judge Ed Self, the man who presided over the majority of the trials related to the Tom Coleman operation, once ran a campaign ad promising to work closely with law enforcement to put drug dealers behind bars.  That’s not supposed to be a judge’s job; but when you’re up for election in a rural county it’s best to talk tough.

Federal judges don’t have to worry about the electorate because they enjoy lifetime appointments.  On the whole, that’s a good thing.  William Wayne Justice, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Texas, received death threats when he ordered the public schools under his jurisdiction to integrate in 1970.  Justice had little choice in the matter since, a year earlier, the Supreme Court had settled the matter in the high-profile Alexander vs. Holmes County case.  It is questionable whether any state court in the South would have done the right thing in the face of massive resistance.

But the power conferred with lifetime appointments can give federal judges a much too high opinion of themselves.  We should hold the role of judge in high esteem while remembering that individual jurists are flesh and blood humans subject to the full range of temptation.  When federal judges are accused of misconduct there must be an independent evaluation process.  Because every judge is vulnerable to complaints from the public there is a natural bias in the direction of leniency.  When judges go bad (inside or outside the courtroom) our system of justice is in peril.