Download This PaperSix Wrongs Take Away a Right: The Odyssey of Curtis Flowers and the Prosecutorial Misconduct that Caused It, Case Comment
Southern University Law Review
38 Pages Posted: 2 Apr 2020 Last revised: 4 May 2020
Date Written: April 14, 2020
Abstract
This Comment discusses the high-profile United States Supreme Court decision in Flowers v. Mississippi, 139 S.Ct. 2228 (2019), which resulted in the overturning of the quadruple murder conviction of Curtis Flowers. Flowers is a black man from a small town in Mississippi where four employees of a local furniture store were murdered in 1996.
Flowers was tried six times for the murders, convicted three times. The first three convictions were overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct, including violations of the U.S. Supreme Court precedent established in Batson v. Kentucky, prohibiting racial discrimination injury selection. The case before the U.S. Supreme Court concerned the fourth conviction, which was overturned in a 7-2 decision because of a Batson violation by the district attorney in Mississippi, Doug Evans, who prosecuted Flowers in all six trials.
The Comment serves several purposes. First, it uses the extraordinary circumstances in Flowers to highlight the potential egregiousness and human cost of prosecutorial misconduct. Second, it reviews the facts of the case to demonstrate how reasonable minds could differ on Flowers’s actual guilt or innocence, further demonstrating the unseemliness of extralegal prosecutorial tactics. Third, it lays forth an analysis in support of the majority decision in Flowers. Finally, it recommends legislative measures to address, curb, remedy, and punish prosecutorial misconduct.
Through research of the case at bar, the preceding appellate records from the prior trials, related cases, related news and editorials, and government & independent research statistics, this Comment reveals the wide-reaching challenges of prosecutorial misconduct. The research supports the recommendations for legislative action. Such action includes, inter alia, the removal of a misbehaving prosecutor and permanent bars to future prosecution of a defendant with several overturned convictions due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Keywords: prosecutorial misconduct, death penalty, race, Curtis Flowers, double jeopardy
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