Mississippi trial -- back to square-1? (flawed case against Curtis Flowers goes on and on and on...)

A crumbling cover-up: Mississippi prosecutor hides the truth about his star witness

Troubled prosecutor Doug Evans

By Alan Bean, Friends of Justice

If you want to understand just how flawed the case against Curtis Flowers is, consider the state’s failed conspiracy to conceal the sad truth about its star witness.

The defense attorneys representing Curtis Flowers have filed a supplemental motion for a new trial.  As previously reported on this blog, Patricia Sullivan, the state’s key witness against Mr. Flowers was convicted on eight counts of income tax fraud in early 2011 and sentenced to 36 months in federal prison.  But Ms. Sullivan was indicted on February 17, a full four months before Curtis Flowers was convicted in Winona, and therein lies the problem.

At a pre-trial hearing in the Flowers case, defense counsel filed a standard request for updated criminal histories on all state witnesses.  District Attorney Doug Evans gave assurances that he had turned over all the information in his possession.

Read the rest of Dr. Bean's story here -- 

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/138aab1f1aaabb5a

Day 8, Curtis Flowers Mississippi Murder Trial; Smoke and Fog...

Dr. Alan Bean, forensic historian, is covering this historical murder trial in Winona, Mississippi. Here is his report on Day Eight:

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” The prosecution of Curtis Flowers rests on this bit of folk wisdom. Curtis told investigators he never strayed onto the east side of Highway 51 on the morning in 1996 when four innocent people were murdered execution-style at the Tardy furniture store. One witness seeing Curtis Flowers on the east side of the highway might be mistaken, but the state has half- a-dozen witnesses making this claim.

With that much smoke there must be a fire some place. Right?

Or are we all being duped by an elaborate fog machine?

Strip the eye-witness testimony from this case and nothing remains but junk science.

There’s the bloody footprint. The Mississippi Crime Lab has shown that the print was made by a size 10-11 Grant Hill Fila running shoe. An empty shoe box for a pair of 10.5 Grant Hill Filas was found in a chest of drawers owned by Connie Moore, Curtis Flowers’ live-in girlfriend.

Connie Moore says the shoe box is from a pair of Filas she purchased for her son Marcus. Marcus confirms this testimony.

Smoke or fog?

The problem pile grows. The pool of blood grew gradually in the half hour between the murders and the arrival of Sam Jones (the first man to witness the crime scene). Moments after the killing there would have been little blood to step in.

Sam Jones has testified that the print wasn’t there when he arrived at the Tardy furniture store.

An older white witness named Porky Collins claims to have seen two black men walking toward Tardys at around 10:00, a moment or two after Sam Jones ran off to report the crime.

Grant Hill Filas were a marketing sensation in the summer of 1996, with over 600,000 pair in the size 10-11 range purchased nationally. Every young man in Winona who could make the $100 price tag owned a pair.

Smoke or fog?

Then we have the single particle of gunshot residue found on the web of the defendant’s right hand. Doug Evans has a little mantra: particles of lead, barium and antimony (with a unique spherical morphology) can only be produced by the discharge of a firearm.

Does this mean Curtis Flowers fired a gun on the morning of July 16, 1996? The jury may be thinking along these lines, but claims from expert witnesses are more modest. A single particle of residue (and an unusually tiny particle at that) can easily be picked up by casual contact, especially if you are in a highly contaminated environment. Curtis Flowers was picked up by two officers, taken to the police station in a police car, and was questioned at the police station. Studies have shown that gunshot residue is ubiquitous in all these environments.

Smoke of fog?

The residue evidence in the Flowers case is meaningless. Judge Joey Loper was asked to restrict testimony on the residue issue but ruled for the state (his standard practice).

A crime this horrific inspires sympathy for the victims and a deep craving for justice, but junk science alone falls short of a conviction.

Enter the witnesses.

For the past few days we have witnessed a parade of sad, compromised black people testifying that, fourteen years ago, they saw Curtis Flowers walking in the direction of the Angelica garment factory, hanging around the Angelica parking lot, returning home, heading downtown, walking in the direction of the furniture store, arguing with an unidentified stranger on the Boulevard in front of Tardys, and running from the scene of the crime.

Smoke or fog?

One or two of these people may come off as a bit addled, but you still have six or seven fingers pointing at Mr. Flowers.

In fact, so many people claim to have seen the defendant doing so many things, at so many times, and in so many places that even the prosecutor and defense counsel have a hard time keeping all the details straight.

Who are these people, and why do they keep repeating the same tortured testimony year-after-year?

There’s Patricia Hollman, the woman who saw Curtis Flowers heading north to get to a southern destination. Elaine Ghoulston, the sharp-eyed neighbor who detected a pair of Grant Hill Fila running shoes at a distance 200 feet (I paced it off yesterday morning).


There’s Katherine Snow who first said she saw a five-foot-six stranger with a cap leaning against a car in the Angelica parking lot and then, a month later, remembered that she had really seen a five-foot-ten, hatless, Curtis Flowers.

There’s Jeanette Fleming who waited seven months to report meeting a flirtatious Curtis Flowers (“Hi, good-looking!”). Fleming was working at McDonald’s when officers spirited her off to the police station for a little tete-a-tete. She has no idea how they got her name.

There’s Charles “Porky” Collins, the man who, in a single eventful morning witnessed (a) Carmen Rigby entering Tardy Furniture for the last time, (b) Curtis Flowers arguing with an unnamed buddy in front of the store, and (c) Doyle Simpson reporting his gun stolen. In the midst of all this activity, Collins made three failed attempts to visit a dry cleaning establishment.

There’s Odell Hallomon who claims an extreme addiction to cigarettes drove him to accuse his loving sister of perjury. In the second trial, Hallomon testified that he and Patricia Hallomon cooked up a story about Curtis Flowers to get their hands on the $30,000 reward. In a letter to Curtis’ mother, Odell said he knew his family would reject him for telling the truth, but he was determined to do the right thing.

“When I got out of prison, my momma was on me everyday,” Odell explained today. After a few weeks of constant harassment from his mother and sister, he got on the phone and told Doug Evans he was going to change his story.

Mr. Evans has done his best to harmonize this flurry of testimony, but serious problems remain. Jeanette Fleming saw Curtis a block from Tardys at 9:00 am and Clemmie Fleming saw him running away from the furniture store 60 minutes later. Would a murder spend a full hour at the crime scene? What did he do, and where did he go between 9:40 (when the bodies were first discovered) and 10:00 when Clemmie saw him leaving the scene?

While Clemmie saw Curtis fleeing the scene, Porky Collins saw him engaged in a vigorous argument on the boulevard.

Police initially had two suspects: Doyle Simpson and Curtis Flowers. Shortly after Porky reported his strange tale to the police, Doyle had been eliminated as a suspect. This made the second man (and his two-tone, dusty, brown Pontiac) superfluous, but the report could not be altered. Doug Evans copes by pretending that Porky never mentioned a second man.

If Curtis had access to a vehicle, why did he leave on foot?

And why is there no overlap in the way the various witnesses describe the defendant’s physical appearance? They have him wearing shorts, “windpants”, dress pants (of various colors), T-shirts (in a rainbow of colors and several designs), a hat, a shaved head, short hair, and, remarkably, a jacket–this on a scorching Mississippi summer’s day.

The problems with the eyewitness testimony are too numerous for a single post, but you get the idea.

Is the state’s case generating smoke or is that a fog of confusion settling over the courtroom.

And why would any self-respecting prosecutor allow himself to be associated with witnesses this unconvincing? Doug Evans created these witnesses. They are his puppets. They twirl and sing at his command. Sure, you can win convictions by sponsoring perjury, but have you no pride man? Is this the legacy you had in mind when you left law school?

Why did all these people, over a period of nine months, agree to sign Curtis Flowers’ death warrant? Was it greed, fear, a desire to be left alone, or a combination of all these factors?

At the end of Clemmie Fleming’s testimony on Monday, defense attorney Ray Carter asked her why it took nine long months for her to turn on Curtis Flowers.

“They told me there was a baby in it?” the dead-pan witness responded.

“A baby?” Carter said.

Clemmie explained that the 16 year-old Bobo Stewart, one of the victims, was just like a baby in her eyes (she was 21 at the time). Outraged by this new information, she broke her silence.

Carter asked one final question. “You don’t believe that Curtis Flowers killed those people at Tardys, do you Clemmie?”

“No, sir,” she replied softly.

So let’s get this straight. Outraged by the death of an innocent adolescent, Clemmie decided to implicate an innocent man.

Ponder that, dear reader, and you’ll know why Friends of Justice is in Winona.

The tension at the courthouse deepens by the day. One observer described a brief encounter with an indignant woman. “Are you with the Friends of Justice?” she asked.

“No,” he replied, “I’m from Greenwood.”

The woman softened instantly. “Oh, then I’m sorry for glaring at you,” she said.

By now, everybody on the white side of the room knows who I am and they’re all glaring (yes, I notice). I was standing outside the courthouse, fumbling with my Blackberry, when I glimpsed a middle-aged gentleman glanced in my direction.

“By the way,” he said, “I find you disgusting.”

“Thank you, sir,” I replied in the calmest voice I could muster.

“You’re welcome,” he snarled.

Friends of Justice

Come to Jesus Time: Curtis Flowers trial, day four; in Winona, Mississippi, Civil rights History Takes Place

Dr. Alan Bean, a forensic historian, covers the ongoing murder trial of Curtis Flowers of Winona, Mississipi. It's history in the making. Here is Dr. Bean's report from day four (posted on Dr. Bean's Friends of Justice website:

The record-setting sixth trial of Curtis Flowers will be tried by eleven white jurors and one African-American juror.

It could have been worse. At the conclusion of the jury selection process, only ten black jurors remained standing. The state had fifteen peremptory strikes. Had DA Doug Evans so chosen, we could have had an all-white jury.

Doug Evans did not so choose. A jury bereft of black jurors in a county that is 45% black would have looked . . . tacky. When the prosecutor in question has a well-earned reputation for racial bias you need at least one African-American in the judicial mix.

In Flowers 3, Evans had to use all fifteen peremptory strikes on African-Americans to get eleven white jurors. This time, Winona’s black community did Evans’ work for him by stampeding, lemming-like, over a cliff. They claimed they were too convinced of Flowers’ innocence to be fair and impartial. They said they couldn’t consider the death penalty under any circumstances. They couldn’t judge a fellow human being under any circumstances.

Several of the ten black jurors left standing at the end of voir dire were barely rescued by skilful rehabilitation work from defense attorney Ray Carter. “You don’t have to commit to the death penalty,” Carter explained, “you must simply be willing to consider it, to think about it, to weigh it as an option. Do you think you could do that?”

More often than not, black jurors answered in the negative. They simply didn’t want to be on a jury with ten or eleven white-people-on-a-mission.

There was an eloquent sadness in Carter’s eyes as he returned to his chair.

Black jurors have been reluctant to serve in previous trials held in Montgomery County–but nothing like this.

Don’t get me wrong, most black jurors are perfectly sincere in their disavowal of the death penalty. In Flowers 4, the state didn’t ask for capital punishment and five black jurors were seated. All five held out for acquittal.

But something new is in the works in Flowers 6. The brutal treatment of Flowers 5 juror, James Bibbs sent a tidal wave of fear through Winona’s black community. Judge Joey Loper pitched a conniption-fit when Bibbs held out for acquittal.

The judge has a nasty temper. He doesn’t just overrule defense motions; he buries defense counsel under a great heap of pejoratives, as in: “That has to be the most bizarre motion I have ever heard.”

But the honorable Mr. Loper has nothing but praise for the perspicacity and prudence of his legal tag team partner Doug Evans, as in: “Once again, I find myself concurring entirely with the state of Mississippi”.

Ideologically, Loper and Evans are joined at the hip. Defense counsel was uncomfortable with a juror who had an opinion regarding the guilt or innocence of Mr. Flowers and had Googled the case the moment she received her summons.

“I don’t see a problem with that,” Evans said. “I mean there are liberal blogs out there and then there are legitimate blogs.” Judge Loper beamed appreciatively.

I got the feeling that the Friends of Justice blog was being consigend to the illegitimate category.

With eleven white jurors and an unabashedly pro-prosecution judge is a conviction inevitable?

Precedent isn’t promising.

Not a single white juror in five prior trials has voted to acquit Curtis Flowers.

Juries in trials with a single black juror have convicted and imposed the death penalty.

But there are positive signs. Defense counsel was able to strike most of the people with intimate ties to murder victims and a firm conviction that Curtis Flowers is a mass murderer. Again and again, jurors of this type swore they could “set aside” their feelings and opinions if the judge asked them to. This emotional naïvete was stunning.

William James, the nineteenth century American philosopher, explained why “older truths” are rarely abandoned. “Their influence is absolutely controlling,” he wrote. “Loyalty to them is the first principle – in most cases it is the only principle; for by far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.”

Defense counsel in the Flowers is trying to convert eleven white jurors to a novel reassessment of long-accepted fact. In Winona’s respectable white community the guilt of Curtis Flowers is an “old truth”, a maxim so well established that it passes for common sense. Getting a single juror to re-evaluate the state’s case is like trying to convert a Baptist to Islam. The new idea, if accepted, would impact an entire web of social relationships. Friendships would be lost. Business opportunities would vanish. The doors and windows of polite society would slam shut.

How much easier to ignore this new truth while abusing those who bear witness to it. This explains the contempt Judge Loper has been heaping on Ray Carter and Alison Steiner this week. They represent a new truth which, if accepted, would reduce Winona’s white civilization to ruins.

In the next few days we will be witnessing a form of spiritual warfare in the courtroom. Loper and Evans will be reassuring the jurors that the old truth deserves their continued trust. Carter and Steiner will be preaching a new truth. At least one juror must experience a Damascus Road conversion in the next few days.

The challenge is formidable but not hopeless. Several of the jurors in this case were children back in 1996 when four people were killed execution-style in Winona Mississippi. Several other jurors are relatively new to Montgomery County. One juror is African American. Half the jury lives outside the comforting rhythms of the white mainstream. If we see a come-to-Jesus moment, it will likely come from this half of the jury.

If opening arguments are any indication, Curtis Flowers’ attorneys will be preaching for conversions.

Link to Friends of Justice --

Winona Black Community Fears Jury Duty in Murder Trial of Curtis Flowers; Winona -- a Culture of Violence

Dr. Alan Bean, a forensic historian, covers the ongoing murder trial of Curtis Flowers of Winona, Mississipi. It's history in the making. Here is Dr. Bean's report from day two (posted on Dr. Bean's Friends of Justice website:

While Winona’s black community runs scared, would-be jurors are running a scam.

It started early. District Attorney Doug Evans was working through his standard voir dire questions. “Anything you’ve heard outside the courtroom needs to be dropped at the door,” he told the six dozen jurors remaining in the jury venire. “Does anyone think they couldn’t do that?”

An earnest-looking white woman raised her hand. “I don’t think I could,” she said. She had formed an opinion about the case, she explained, and no evidence she heard in the courtroom could possibly change her mind.

A black woman’s hand shot into the air. “I don’t think I could either,” she reported.

Seconds later, three more black jurors were saying the same thing.

Then the prosecutor asked if there was anyone who didn’t feel they could stand in judgment of another human being.

Eleven hands were raised, two white and nine black.

Ray Carter, Mr. Flowers lead counsel, used all his lawyerly skills to rehabilitate most of these people—if only for the time being. Most of them were desperate to avoid jury duty.

“Mr. Flowers is not guilty,” Carter told his captive audience. “In fact, Mr. Flowers is innocent.”

“This is improper,” Doug Evans roared, his voice dripping with indignation.

Carter was undeterred. He had expected this response.

“Judge,” he explained calmly, “I don’t want anyone to think that just because Curtis Flowers has been tried over and over again, that he’s guilty.”

Then the black attorney turned his attention to the jurors who claimed they couldn’t stand in judgment. Carter knew what they were thinking. Most of them didn’t believe Curtis Flowers was guilty, but they feared a powerful backlash from leading lights within the white community if they voted their conscience.

Almost all the “couldn’t-sit-in-judgment” people are economically dependent on influential white people, but it goes deeper than that. They wonder what would happen if their children or their grandchildren got cross-ways with the law. Would the authorities retaliate against the-guy-that-hung-the-jury-in-2010? Maybe not, but how can you be sure?

“I know some of you are uncomfortable being here,” Carter said. “But sometimes in life we are asked to do things we don’t like to do.”

Carter called one of the jurors who used the can’t-sit-in-judgment dodge by name. “Did you tell Mr. Evans you couldn’t sit in judgment, or did you just say you didn’t want to?”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t,” the woman explained, “I said I didn’t want to.”

Several black jurors adjusted their earlier comments, but others refused to budge. “I couldn’t do it,” one woman explained. “The ones who are in there, the decision that they would make, I couldn’t agree with it.”

Translation: “All those white folks are going to convict, I wouldn’t be able to go along, and I’m afraid I’d pay dearly. Either that, or I’d cave in to pressure and hate myself for the rest of my life.”

Most of the remaining white jurors are sincere Christians struggling to do the right thing. Everyone in their social world believes Curtis is guilty. It’s settled orthodoxy, like believing in God. A healthy percentage of white jurors freely admit that, from where they sit, Curtis Flowers looks guilty and no amount of evidence is going to change that belief.

Another subset of white jurors is capable of maintaining an open-mind on the guilt-innocence issue. They live on the borders of Winona’s social mainstream and haven’t been directly affected by the wagon-circling and the rush to judgment.

Then we have the smiling members of the juror class. These folks are desperate for a conviction but know they can’t admit as much. They attend church with the victims’ families, they see them socially, and, back in the day, they went to school with them. Nonetheless, they could put all that aside. They could wipe their minds of all prejudgments and remove every twinge of empathy and compassion from their hearts.

These men and women are perjuring themselves to get on the jury.

But the slightest suggestion that these folks might be less than sincere is greeted with howls of protest (literally) from Evans and Loper. If white jurors claim to be fair and impartial, they are.

At one point, Ray Carter tried to explain to the jurors that white people sometimes have trouble identifying black people, and vice versa.

Doug Evans bellowed his objection and Judge Loper sustained. “This trial isn’t about black and white,” Loper sermonized, “it’s about right and wrong and it’s about guilt and innocence.”

Really? Does the Judge believe his own rhetoric?

On some level, I think he does. Loper spent most of Day Two defending the white con artists working the room. Loper and Evans worked like experienced tag team partners.

There is something unnerving about DA Evans and his pet judge. Joey Loper lives in a world of legal platitudes and fair-and-impartial jurors who know instinctively when the state has passed the threshold of reasonable doubt.

Race is never an issue in Loperland. All-white juries are fine and dandy because race doesn’t matter. State witnesses can be trusted because they’re just doing their civic duty (at $30,000 a pop).

In Loperland, jurors work in pristine isolation from their peers—there is no such thing as jury psychology or a herd mentality, just earnest citizens motivated by persuasive evidence.

In Loperland, race is a myth and social class is a mirage. There is no history and no sociology.

In Loperland, prosecutors always operate in good faith, defendants are always guilty and defense attorneys (if they know what’s good for them) yield gracefully to the inevitable.

But while Judge Loper and DA Evans turn a blind eye to the obvious, I am beginning to wonder if a credible jury can be selected from this kind of venire.