/Curtis Flowers case to get US Supreme Court review

Curtis Flowers case to get US Supreme Court review

Curtis Flowers has spent most of his life at Mississippi State Penitentiary, Parchman. He may be eligible for a seventh trial. Flowers has maintained his innocence throughout the proceedings, even though District Attorney Doug Evans repeatedly tried the case again after two successful appeals. This case was highlighted on American Public Media’s investigative podcast “In The Dark”. It examined evidence regarding other possible suspects and weaknesses in Flowers’ case. A Cornell Death Penalty Project team is representing Flowers. The podcast also looked at racial discrimination in jury selections for Flowers’s trial. It found that Evans’s district had excluded black jurors at a rate four times greater than the rate they had excluded white jurors. The Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether Batson v. Kentucky was applied incorrectly by the state supreme Court. This case ruled that jurors could not be struck solely on the basis of race. Flowers’ legal team filed the petition to revoke certiorari in June. In 2016, another appeal was filed by the Mississippi Innocence Project. Another appeal was filed in 2016 by a different legal team, including the Mississippi Innocence Project.