Case No. 17-9572 | Miss.
Preview by Michael Fischer, Online Editor
On July 16, 1996, the small town of Winona, Mississippi was rocked by the execution-style murders of four employees during an armed robbery of the Tardy Furniture Store. The next year, an AfricanAmerican man named Curtis Flowers was indicted for the crime and stood trial for what would be the first of six attempts by the state to convict him. At his first trial, Flowers was found guilty of murder but his conviction was reversed and remanded for a new trial on evidentiary grounds by the Mississippi Supreme Court. Flowers was again found guilty and his conviction was again reversed and remanded on the same grounds. Despite a third conviction, the Mississippi Supreme Court again reversed and remanded, this time finding that the prosecutor engaged in racial discrimination during jury selection. Mistrials were subsequently declared in Flowers’ fourth and fifth trials before he was finally convicted for a sixth time for all four murders and sentenced to death.
On appeal, Flowers argued that the State violated his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by using its peremptory strikes in a racially discriminatory manner during jury selection. The Mississippi Supreme Court denied his appeal, but the United States Supreme Court ordered reconsideration of the ruling given their recent decision in Foster v. Chatman, 136 S.Ct. 1737 (2016), wherein the Court found that prosecutors in a capital case had engaged in intentional discrimination during jury selection. On remand, the Mississippi Supreme Court again upheld the conviction and Flowers again appealed.
The question before the Court is whether the Mississippi Supreme Court erred in its application of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986) by finding that the prosecution had not engaged in racial discrimination during jury selection through its use of preemptory strikes. Flowers argues that the State failed to properly apply the three-step process established in Batson for detecting racial motivation, in which “first the defendant must establish a prima facie case of racial discrimination; second, the prosecutor may offer race-neutral reasons for the strike(s); and third, the court must determine whether the defendant has met his burden of proving purposeful discrimination.” Brief for Petitioner at 30, Flowers v. Mississippi, No. 17-9572 (U.S. filed Dec. 27, 2018). According to Flowers, Batson requires “careful consideration” of the cumulative evidence of racial discrimination, and the Mississippi Supreme Court failed to take into account the prosecutor’s history of repeated discrimination during jury selection in the previous trials and his disparate treatment of potential African American jurors before the trial at issue. Id. at 30–33, 44.
The State counters that Batson explicitly established that the defendant carries the burden of persuasion to prove the existence of purposeful discrimination and that Flowers failed to meet that burden. Brief for Respondent at 12, Flowers v. Mississippi, No. 17-9572 (U.S. filed Feb. 07 2019). They argue that Flowers’ lack of “inferential proof of racial animus,” combined with the Mississippi Supreme Court’s careful analysis of the valid race-neutral reasons for the peremptory strikes, establish that no error was committed in upholding the conviction. Id. at 22–26.