In 1996, Curtis Flowers was charged with the murders of four people in Winona, Mississippi. The state initiated separate, successive trials against Flowers for each homicide. Juries in the first two trials found him guilty and recommended death sentences. However, each verdict was reversed on appeal due to “accumulations of errors,” including claims of race discrimination in jury selection: In both trials, the prosecutor used all of his “strikes” to exclude African-Americans—significant because Flowers is African-American. The first case was tried by an all-white jury; the second by a jury of 11 whites and one African-American who was included only after Flowers persuaded the trial judge that the prosecutor attempted to strike this juror based upon his race.
A third trial in 2004 consolidated all four homicides into one proceeding. Again, the prosecutor used his peremptory challenges to exclude African-Americans from the jury. Ultimately, the jury included only one African-American member. This jury convicted Flowers on all counts, and again he was sentenced to death. He appealed, and the Mississippi Supreme Court concluded that the prosecution’s jury selection strategy presented “as strong a prima facie case of racial discrimination as we have ever seen” (Flowers v. State, 2007, at 935). The case was remanded for yet another trial.
In the fourth trial, Flowers was not charged with capital murder, so he would not be eligible for the death penalty if convicted. After challenging jurors for cause (largely on the grounds that they knew the defendant or his family), the prosecutor used all 11 of his peremptory challenges to strike African-Americans from the jury. After these strikes were exhausted, the jury ultimately included seven white jurors and five African-American jurors—which more closely tracked the racial demographics of the community (about 45 percent African-American at the time). This jury deadlocked, and thus resulted in a mistrial. A fifth trial was held in 2008, and a jury composed of nine whites and three African-Americans also deadlocked.
Jury selection in Flowers’ sixth trial, which reintroduced the death penalty as a possible punishment, proceeded much like the first four. Despite having a diverse venire of 89 white and 67 African-American prospective jurors, after challenges for cause related to familiarity with Flowers’ family or death penalty views resulted in removal of 49 African-Americans, the prosecution exercised five of its six peremptory challenges against African-Americans. Ultimately a jury of 11 whites and one African-American was seated. After only 30 minutes of deliberation, the jury convicted Flowers on all counts and recommended the death sentence. His latest conviction is being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, which will determine whether the prosecutor’s strikes were based on potential jurors’ race, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause (Batson v. Kentucky, 1986).
As psychological research has shown, racial composition is a reliable predictor of jury verdicts in capital cases, and studies indicate that diverse mock juries deliberate longer, discuss more evidence and make fewer factual errors (e.g., Sommers, 2006 & 2008). Research also suggests that when juries are not representative of the communities from which they are drawn, the public has less faith in the criminal justice system (e.g., Sommers, 2008). Many of these findings are reflected in Flowers’ case: The correlation between race and verdict in Flowers’ successive trials is apparent, and citizens will certainly draw conclusions about their fairness.
“Judicial Notebook” is a project of APA Div. 9 (Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues).
