Supreme Court tosses murder conviction in case that raised question of racial bias
Source: Washington Post
The Supreme Court on Friday threw out the most recent conviction of a Mississippi man who has been tried an extraordinary six times for a quadruple murder in 1996, finding that a zealous prosecutor once again had improperly kept African Americans off the jury. The decision was 7 to 2, with Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh writing the majority opinion. He said it broke no new legal ground, but reinforced the court's rulings about when a prosecutor's bias eliminated a potential juror.
Six times, District Attorney Doug Evans, who is white, has attempted to convict Curtis Flowers, who is black, in a prosecutorial pursuit that may be without parallel. Flowers was charged with executing four people inside Tardy Furniture Store in the small town of Winona, Miss.. in 1996. Two trials, the only ones with more than one African American on the panel, resulted in hung juries. Three convictions were overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court for prosecutorial misconduct and improper maneuvering by Evans to keep blacks off the jury.
But the state said Evans had offered race-neutral reasons in the most recent trial, in 2010, when the prosecutor struck five of six black potential jurors. He was convicted of murdering Bertha Tardy, 59, and store employees Carmen Rigby, 45, Robert Golden, 42, and 16-year-old Derrick "Bo Bo" Stewart, and sentenced to death. The Supreme Court was not considering the evidence against Flowers, but instead examining Evans's prosecutorial tactics.
When picking a jury, some potential members are eliminated by the judge and lawyers for cause -- that they have a conflict of interest, for instance, or because they say in a capital case that they could not impose the death penalty. Prosecutors and defense attorneys also receive what are known as peremptory challenges. They can strike potential jurors they simply don't want on the jury, and generally those choices cannot be second-guessed. But in a 1986 case, Batson v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court said the challenges could not be used to strike a potential juror because of his or her race. (Gender was later added as a forbidden purpose.)
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-overturns-mississippi-mans-murder-conviction-in-case-that-raised-questions-of-racial-bias-orders-new-trial/2019/06/21/6fc1b2d8-942d-11e9-b570-6416efdc0803_story.html
Original full headline (now updated above with their correction) - Supreme Court overturns Mississippi man's murder conviction in case that raised questions of racial bias, orders new trial
Curtis Flowers, who is African American, was tried six times in the 1996 slaying of four people in a Winona, Miss., furniture store. His lawyers had argued that the local district attorney, Doug Evans, habitually blocked black potential jurors.
An earlier version of this alert incorrectly stated the Supreme Court had ordered a new trial. This alert has been corrected.
Original article -
June 21 at 10:09 AM
Curtis Flowers, who is African American, was tried six times in the 1996 slaying of four people in a Winona, Miss., furniture store. His lawyers had argued that the local district attorney, Doug Evans, habitually blocked black potential jurors.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2019/06/21/supreme-court-overturns-mississippi-mans-murder-conviction-in-case-that-raised-questions-of-racial-bias-orders-new-trial/?utm_term.6188a57d4f49
From SCOTUSBlog -
Link to tweet
TEXT
SCOTUSblog
✔
@SCOTUSblog
In case of Curtis Flowers, who was tried six times for the same murders, #SCOTUS holds that the prosecutor's repeated use of peremptory challenges to remove black people from the jury pool violated the Constitution
167
10:04 AM - Jun 21, 2019
= new reply since forum marked as read
This is ultimately the result of a busted system?
