A Mississippi man was tried 6 times for murder, and is now being given a seventh change because of the prosecution’s racially biased jury selection. In each of Curtis Flowers’ six trials two decades ago, Doug Evans deliberately selected white jurors, even eliminating 41 of 42 black jurors. The state has been repeatedly trying to try Flowers under an all-white jury. In 1986, it was ruled unconstitutional to exclude someone from a jury based on race or gender. When the prosecution selects prospective jurors, black candidates are asked 145 questions, and white candidates are asked 12 questions. Flowers has been incarcerated since 1996 for the murder of 4 store employees. The evidence against him is flimsy at best, and only a repeated misconduct on the behalf of the prosecution has kept him behind bars. In 1997 he was found guilty and sentenced to death, but the state court threw out the conviction, which has been turning for years.
The evidence against him ammounts to this: he worked at the furniture store where the employees were murdered, $235 was hidden in his headboard (there was $400 stolen from the cash register), a bloody shoe print, gunpowder residue, eyewitness accounts, and a stolen gun that was unaccounted for. But Flowers has no previous criminal record, and without a just and equal jury, it’s likely that any charge against him will be heavily biased.
Doug Evans in the sixth trial:
The jury selection process seems ridiculously unfair. It reminds me of the "literacy tests" that used to be required to vote, where white citizens used to be given the vote because of their heritage but black citizens would have to complete ridiculously long and incomprehensible tests that had intentional trick questions and extremely ambiguous phrasing. The evidence does seem somewhat substantial, though, but because of this a fair trial would be best to determine his fate.
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Having eliminated 41 out of 42 black jurors, there was no way the jury would've been unbiased enough to make an accurate assessment of Curtis Flowers’ guilt or lack thereof. This reminds me of Rodney King's case in which the trial was moved from Los Angeles, an ethically diverse neighborhood, to Simi Valley, a heavily white community. It is undeniable that members of the legal system use racial bias to their advantage in order to attain their desired outcome and continue to systematically oppress minority people.
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