Doug Evans, Curtis Flowers and Winona, Mississippi are stuck in Groundhog Day. Just when you think the story is heading for resolution, it starts all over again.
Tag: Curtis Flowers
Why there will be no trial seven for Curtis Flowers
There will be no seventh trial for Curtis Flowers. If the Supreme Court of the United States doesn’t vacate the 2010 conviction in the Flowers case, jaws across America will hit the floor. Mine will be one of them. Curtis is almost sure to get … Continue reading Why there will be no trial seven for Curtis Flowers
In Memoriam: Chokwe Lumumba
By Alan Bean
I didn’t know much about Chokwe Lumumba when I called him up five years ago. I gathered from his name that he was a Black nationalist. All I really knew was that he had served as defense counsel for Curtis Flowers, a man who has now stood trial an unprecedented three times for a crime he did not commit. I didn’t realize I was speaking to the future mayor of Jackson, Mississippi.
Lumumba died recently after serving only eight months in office, apparently of natural causes.
From reading the voluminous trial transcript of Curtis Flowers’ second trial, I knew Chokwe Lumumba was a passionate defender who took his work very seriously. In defending Mr. Flowers, he had crisscrossed the state, interviewing potential witnesses and re-interviewing the state’s hapless witnesses.
If anything, Chokwe appeared to be too invested in the case. As the trial drew to its close, Lumumba told the all-white jury that racial bias was blinding them to the obvious. When I read that rebuke I found myself wishing that he had kept his opinions to himself.
But Chokwe knew he could not vindicate his client at trial. Not in Gulfport, Mississippi. Not that day. All he could do was firm up the record so the appeals court could give his man a second chance. In that case, making direct reference to racial bias was a good plan. The inevitable guilty verdict was eventually reversed on the grounds of racial bias in jury selection.
Chockwe Lumumba was part of the second wave of civil rights activists who no longer saw full integration as realistic or even desirable. They spoke of creating a separate country, comprised largely of “Black Belt” counties in the South, where Black people could chart their own course free from the debilitating influence of White bigotry and racial resentment.
It is ironic, therefore, that a dedicated Black nationalist ended up as mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, a city that was once at the very heart of the never-in-a-thousand-years struggle for White supremacy. (more…)
For Curtis Flowers, Mississippi is Still Burning
Thanks to Paul Alexander for getting the Curtis Flowers fiasco before the readers of Rolling Stone.
AGB
For Curtis Flowers, Mississippi Is Still Burning
A death row inmate maintains his innocence in the face of six deeply flawed trials
August 7, 2013 4:40 PM ET
On July 30th, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) held hearings on Capitol Hill entitled “A Conversation on Race and Justice in America” in response to the intense national debate that has resulted from the killing of Trayvon Martin. Racial profiling – “a secret hiding in public,” according to panelist Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center – was discussed, as were Stand Your Ground laws. Less attention was paid to the perilous way the legal system treats some African-Americans who end up in it, especially those with neither the money nor the means to defend themselves.
Consider Curtis Flowers. Today, he sits on Mississippi’s death row, where he has been for 16 years. Tried six times on the same murder charges – the only known person in American history to endure that fate – he has never hedged in proclaiming his innocence, even refusing plea bargains. “I’m not going to say I killed someone when I didn’t,” he said in 2010. “I would rather be executed and go to Heaven and know I did the right thing than to be in this world if I have to admit to something I didn’t do.”
Flowers’ ordeal began in July 1996 on the morning Bertha Tardy and three of her employees were killed execution-style in her furniture store in Winona, Mississippi. They were shot with such precision that it took only five bullets to kill four people. Two weeks earlier, Flowers worked for Tardy for about three days. He said he quit; others said he was fired. Regardless, Doug Evans, the local district attorney, zeroed in on Flowers as a disgruntled employee and made him the prime suspect. (more…)
Why an innocent man has been prosecuted six times for the same crime?
By Alan Bean
Doug Evans investigation and prosecution of the infamous 1996 Tardy murders have elicited some strong statements over the years.
The Mississippi Supreme Court has opined that Evans’ desperate attempt to exclude Black people from the jury is the most flagrant example of racially biased jury selection they have ever witnessed.
Robert Johnson, former chief of the Jackson, Mississippi police department, called the investigation that led to Mr. Flowers’ arrest “the worst investigation I have ever seen.”
Curtis Flowers has now been tried six times for the same crime with the state using the same evidence, the same witnesses and the same strategy every time. Three guilty verdicts have been reversed by the Mississippi Supreme Court because of gross prosecutorial misconduct. On two other occasions, juries split along racial lines. In the fourth trial, for instance, all five Black jurors voted to acquit while all seven White jurors were willing to convict.
Prosecutor Doug Evans, has a case he can sell to white jurors. But Black jurors aren’t buying.
How do we account for this gap in perception?
From the moment four bodies were discovered in a furniture store in Winona, Mississippi, this case has been driven by racial, social and political anxiety.
Doug Evans was looking at four victims and no murder weapon. This meant trouble and he knew it. (more…)
Flowers appeal is devastating
By Alan Bean
Just over three years after Curtis Flowers was convicted for murdering four people at a Mississippi furniture store in 1996, his attorneys have filed an appeal. You may wonder how it could take three years to compose an appeal brief, especially in a case so open-and-shut that a jury took only 29 minutes to render a guilty verdict.
This wasn’t Curtis Flowers’ first courtroom rodeo. In fact, he has gone to trial on these charges six times, more than any other capital defendant in the history of American jurisprudence.
Convictions in Flowers 1 and 2 were reversed by the Mississippi Supreme Court due to gross prosecutorial misconduct (primarily arguing facts not in evidence) and racially biased jury selection procedures. Other trials ended in hung juries, largely because DA Doug Evans, fearful of another reversal, didn’t take heroic measures to keep African Americans off the jury. In the most dramatic case, five Black jurors voted to acquit while seven White jurors found Evans’ case convincing. (more…)
Great Daily Beast article on Curtis Flowers
Paul Alexander’s concise article in the Daily Beast provides the best summary of this complicated case published to date. If you want to know more about DA Doug Evan’s ties to an unapologetically racist organization, or the reasons many (myself included) find the witnesses in this case less than credible, you can read Alexander’s eBook Mistried or check out my blogging on the subject. But if you have never heard of Curtis Flowers and are wondering why Alexander calls him “Mississippi’s Marked Man” this is a great place to start. Bottom line, this case has never been investigated, and that needs to change. AGB
Curtis Flowers: Mississippi’s Marked Man
by Paul Alexander Jun 29, 2013 4:45 AM EDT
In a shocking case of injustice, an African-American has been tried for the same murder six times, pursued by a crusading prosecutor. Paul Alexander on Mississippi’s marked man
As the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida continues to grab national headlines, a case, now playing out in Mississippi, also raises questions about race and justice in America. (more…)
Noted author tackles the Curtis Flowers story
Alan Bean
Paul Alexander is the accomplished author of eight books, numerous eBooks, and over 100 major articles written for publications ranging from Rolling Stone to the New York Times. When he stumbled across my blogging on the Curtis Flowers story, he was immediately interested. A native of Birmingham, AL, Alexander knows how racial bias is infused into every facet of social life, including the criminal justice system.
Still, my conclusions were too damning to be taken at face value. Alexander visited Winona, Mississippi, re-interviewed the folks I talked to several years ago, and dug up some fascinating (and disturbing) new information.
The result is Mistried, a gripping eBook released yesterday by RosettaBooks. You can get the Kindle version for free at Amazon if you act quickly, (or pay $2.99 if you dawdle). Most readers can digest the contents in less than two hours; the book is of very modest length because Alexander doesn’t waste a word.
If you like the book, please leave a comment and a five-star rating on the Amazon site.
Mistried
By Paul Alexander
Can a person be tried more than once for the same crime in the United States? Under usual circumstances, no. But in Mississippi, one man was tried six times for the same brutal crime-and his ordeal still hasn’t ended. (more…)
How about a federal-only death penalty?
Doug Berman is a law professor, sentencing expert and ardent blogger. He could be described as a pragmatic progressive who wants to reform the criminal justice system but advocates policy proposals with a real chance of being implemented. Berman notes that most people have moral problems with the death penalty but still want it available for “the worst of the worst”. One solution is to restrict the ultimate penalty to the federal system and take it out of the hands of states courts altogether.
Unlike Berman, I am not a death penalty agnostic. When I think of the death penalty I immediately envision Curtis Flowers, a demonstrably innocent man locked away in solitary confinement in Mississippi’s Parchman prison. If the conviction in his record-setting sixth trial fails to hold (as is likely) and there is no way to retry Flowers at the state level without punting on the death penalty, District Attorney Doug Evans would have a dilemma on his hands. The investigation of this case was so flawed, and the “evidence” presented to six juries has been so shamelessly manufactured that it would never withstand federal scrutiny.
Prosecutor Doug Evans’ intimate ties to the proudly racist Council of Conservative Citizens provides a partial explanation for his decision to build a case around the perjured testimony of a lying opportunist who is in federal prison for tax fraud using threats and the false promise of a $30,000 reward. This case would disintegrate in minutes if it was handed to a competent federal prosecutor and the same could be said for dozens of other weak cases involving black defendants and racially biased prosecutors that have been tried before predominantly white juries in little towns like Winona, Mississippi.
Here’s Berman’s argument:
Does Boston bombing provide still more support for my federal-only death penalty perspective?
As long-time readers know, I like to describe myself a “death-penalty agnostic” concerning the theoretical and empirical arguments that traditionally surround the the criminal punishment of death. But while I have long been uncertain about the “meta” arguments for and against capital punishment, as a matter of modern US policy and procedures I have a firm and distinctive view: given (1) persistent public/democratic support for death as a possible punishment for the “worst of the worst,” and given (2) persistent evidence that states struggle in lots of ways for lots of reasons with the fair and effective administration of capital punishment, I believe that (1+2=3) as a policy and practical matter we ought to consider and embrace an exclusively federal death penalty.
Regular readers have seen and surely remember various prior post in which I have talked through this idea a bit, and I have linked some of these posts below. But, as the title of this post is meant to highlight, I think the soundness and wisdom of my distinctive view on the best modern way to administer capital punishment in the United States is now on full display in the wake of the Boston bombings.
Massachusetts, of course, does not have death as an available punishment. And yet, I have already seen reports of many local and state officials (not to mention Massachusetts citizens) who now say they are open to (if not eager to) have the bombing suspect(s) prosecuted in federal court in part because federal law includes the possibility of the death penalty. Moreover, there is every reason to view terror bombings like these, whether or not they have direct international connections and implications, as the kinds of crimes that ought to be investigated and prosecuted primarily by national authorities (assisted, of course, by state and local official and agents).
Stated in slightly different terms and with the events in Boston now making these ideas especially salient and timely, I believe that essentially by definition in our modern globally-wired and national-media-saturated American society (1) every potential “worst of the worst” murder is of national (and not just local) concern, and (2) every potential “worst of the worst” murder merits the potential involvement of federal investigators, and (3) federal authorities have constitutional and practical reasons for wanting or needing to be the primary “deciders” concerning the investigation and prosecution of every potential “worst of the worst” murder, and (4) state and local officials typically will welcome being able to “federalize” any potential “worst of the worst” murder, and thus (1+2+3+4=5) we should just make death a punishment only available at the federal level so that the feds know they can and should get involved if (and only when?) federal interests and/or the value of cooperative federalism are implicated by any potential “worst of the worst” murder.
A nice girl like you . . .
(This post is part of a series concerning Curtis Flowers, an innocent man convicted of a horrific crime that has divided a small Mississippi town. Information on the Flowers case can be found here.)
Lydia Chassaniol is in trouble. How much trouble remains to be seen, but the Mississippi State Senator (R-Winona) has the regional blogosphere in an uproar.
Remember the mid-to-late 1990s when prominent Mississippi politicians like Bob Barr and Trent Lott got too cozy with the Council of Conservative Citizens? That’s the white separatist hate group the New York Times describes as having “a thinly-veiled white supremacist agenda”. You can buy a “white pride” T-shirt on the CCC website and read headlines like: “The whole world treats Obama as a joke!” and “Mass immigration equals white genocide.”
The CCC platform praises America’s “European” heritage and condemns “mixture of the races”. CCC leaders still like to refer to “Martin Looter Coon” and have described African Americans as “a retrograde species of humanity”. According to Ward Schaefer of the Jackson Free Press, “Columnists in the CofCC’s newsletter have hyperventilated that non-white immigration to the U.S. was transforming the country into a ‘slimy brown mass of glop.'”
You get the picture. (more…)
Friends of Justice 