Speaker 1: Curtis Flowers lived in the small town of Winona, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: and began a job at Tardy Furniture, but while transporting
Speaker 1: some car batteries, two of them fell off his truck
Speaker 1: and store on er Birtha. Tardy said that the damages
Speaker 1: might have to come out of his paycheck. After a
Speaker 1: full day of work, Curtis decided to cut his losses
Speaker 1: and move on. On the morning of July six, the
Speaker 1: bodies of birth of Tardy and three employees were found shot.
Speaker 1: One was still alive rushed to the hospital, but later
Speaker 1: pronounced dead. After hearing about the allegedly disgruntled Curtis Flowers,
Speaker 1: police used a toxic mix of a cash reward and
Speaker 1: intimidation to extract witness statements, widely varying in detail. They
Speaker 1: pieced together a ridiculous narrative of Curtis's whereabouts, including a
Speaker 1: dubious story about a gun that his uncle had reported missing.
Speaker 1: With this flimsy motive and even flimsier evidence, along with
Speaker 1: racially discriminatory jury selection, Curtis Flowers was first tried and
Speaker 1: convicted of earth attorney's murder. While that conviction was being
Speaker 1: thrown out, he was convicted for the murder of one
Speaker 1: of the other employees, and when the second conviction was
Speaker 1: thrown out, they tried him again for all four murders.
Speaker 1: After six trials and a trip to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: this force would finally come to an end when American
Speaker 1: Public Media made a podcast called in the Dark Shining
Speaker 1: Up Bright Light on Curtis's case and the racist district
Speaker 1: attorney driving it. After twenty three long years on death
Speaker 1: row and another trip to the Supreme Court, district Attorney
Speaker 1: Doug Evans finally stepped off the case. Upon review, the
Speaker 1: Attorney General of Mississippi dropped all charges. This is wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction with Jason Flom. Welcome back to wrongful conviction with
Speaker 1: Jason Flam. And I'm gonna throw a few numbers at
Speaker 1: you before I introduce our guest. So, Curtis Flowers was
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted six times spent twenty three years on death
Speaker 1: row for four murders that he didn't commit. Curtis Flowers,
Speaker 1: Welcome to wrongful conviction here. So let's go back to
Speaker 1: the beginning. You grew up in a small town in Mississippi.
Speaker 1: Right is about eighty four miles north of Jackson, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: a small town about the population of five thousand, over black.
Speaker 1: Did you have a happy childhood? Yes, I do. Brothers, sisters, brothers.
Speaker 1: To have four sisters, one brother, I'm the I guess
Speaker 1: you'd call the middle child. So everything was pretty much fine,
Speaker 1: I guess until what would seemed like a very minor
Speaker 1: incident at a store that you only worked that for
Speaker 1: a few days. I'm talking about Tardy Furniture, which should
Speaker 1: have come and went and never been the subject of
Speaker 1: even one little minor discussion. But nonetheless, since it was
Speaker 1: the incident that started this crazy chain of events going,
Speaker 1: can you just tell us what happened at Tardy Furniture. Well,
Speaker 1: I went to work and tardies on one morning, and uh,
Speaker 1: she asked me to pull around back so the business
Speaker 1: next door could load some batteries onto the truck, and
Speaker 1: leaving I pulled off in two of the batteries slid
Speaker 1: off the truck. I got back to the store, I
Speaker 1: told her about them. She said, we'll take them back
Speaker 1: around there and let me see if they can replace them,
Speaker 1: because if they can't, then you don't have to pay
Speaker 1: for them, because she should have tied them down. And
Speaker 1: I said, okay, So I took them back. Mr Jimmy Sanders,
Speaker 1: who worked there, told me that we well, we'll work
Speaker 1: it out. So I went back and told her everything
Speaker 1: was good. You know, she sent me home to deliver
Speaker 1: furniture all that day, you know, by me just starting.
Speaker 1: You know, she even advanced me, I think it was.
Speaker 1: And didn't go back to work at the store after that.
Speaker 1: But I didn't fine whatever, and uh later it became
Speaker 1: a motive, right, like this little minor incident was going
Speaker 1: to cause you to go back and shoot four people
Speaker 1: in the head. So now, unbeknownst to you, a terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible thing happens right at Tardy Furniture. On the morning
Speaker 1: of July n Sam Jones Jr. Retired employee of Tardy
Speaker 1: Furniture Company, reported that the owner of Birth of Tardy,
Speaker 1: who was fifty nine, had called him at nine am
Speaker 1: asking him to come into the store to train a
Speaker 1: couple of new employees, a guy named Derek Bobo Stewart
Speaker 1: of sixteen and Robert Golden of forty two. Old Matt
Speaker 1: Jones arrived an hour later and found a horror scene.
Speaker 1: He found that Tardy, Stewart, Golden, and another employee named
Speaker 1: Carmen Rigby, old woman had all been shot and killed.
Speaker 1: Well one of them, sixteen year old Mr Stewart, was
Speaker 1: the only one still alive, but he died in the
Speaker 1: hospital a few days later, and supposedly two seven dollars
Speaker 1: was missing from the cash riders. So that gives me
Speaker 1: the chills because it's just what's the price of a life?
Speaker 1: And then they rest in peace. So just this crazy coincidence,
Speaker 1: smallest town like that, you know, place that you happened
Speaker 1: to previously work and even the fact that you worked
Speaker 1: there at one time really shouldn't have set off too
Speaker 1: many alarm bells. Maybe somebody would have quickly looked into
Speaker 1: it and ruled you out, But this wasn't just anybody, right.
Speaker 1: What we're talking about is you ran into the crosshairs
Speaker 1: of District Attorney Doug Evans. Then they covered this in
Speaker 1: this fantastic podcast, which I'm sure some of our listeners
Speaker 1: have heard called in the Dark. Thought it was brilliantly done.
Speaker 1: Let me just say that one of the things that
Speaker 1: jumps out to me from the podcast about Doug Evans
Speaker 1: was that an analysis by a p M for the
Speaker 1: podcast discovered that Evans and his assistant d A's over
Speaker 1: the course of twenty six years, struck black perspective jurors
Speaker 1: at nearly four and a half times the rate they
Speaker 1: struck white ones. And of course we know that's one
Speaker 1: of the main reasons why your conviction kept getting overturned,
Speaker 1: because he kept excluding black jurors from the jury's which
Speaker 1: is of course a violation of the fourteenth Amendment. This
Speaker 1: is a guy who was elected again in November two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, so he's been in there forever still the
Speaker 1: d A. But numerous civil rights lawsuits have been filed
Speaker 1: against him. But according to the Mississippi Bar Association, it
Speaker 1: is hard to believe he's received no public sanction and
Speaker 1: remains a lawyer in good standing. So let's let's go back.
Speaker 1: Let's go back. Hold them. So the crime took place
Speaker 1: on July sixteenth, nine six When did you even hear
Speaker 1: about it? The same day? Uh, they come by the house,
Speaker 1: wants to know if they could talk with me. They
Speaker 1: said they heard that I used to work there and
Speaker 1: maybe I could help them. You know, maybe I've seen
Speaker 1: something and don't realize I saw it, and I so
Speaker 1: sure I went down with him untild you know, every
Speaker 1: time I left. You know what we talked about here today,
Speaker 1: don't don't tell anyone else. And we just want to
Speaker 1: know you're not a suspect. We just we just thought
Speaker 1: maybe you could help, you know, So I said, okay,
Speaker 1: But everyone on the street was telling me that when
Speaker 1: they talked with them, they said I was a suspect.
Speaker 1: They tested your hands for gunshot residents in my hands
Speaker 1: to do the morning they picked me up. I wanted
Speaker 1: to question me. They wanted to rule me out, so
Speaker 1: he said, and uh, I agree, And I agreed to
Speaker 1: gunshot residue tests, and they gave it to me. And
Speaker 1: later they come back and say they think one particle
Speaker 1: of gunshot residude. You know, I don't know anything about residue,
Speaker 1: but law your argor that there are three elements to
Speaker 1: gunshot residude. You can't have one without the other two.
Speaker 1: And and he asked them, well, how did miss Flower
Speaker 1: get to the police station and I got down? It
Speaker 1: would have stayed true, he said, isn't it true? They
Speaker 1: fried their weapons every morning, and and miss Flower the
Speaker 1: ship hands with him, so he could have picked up
Speaker 1: that particle just like that, or could have come from
Speaker 1: a firework and we have a whole episode of our
Speaker 1: show Wrong for Conviction Jump Science devoted to the gunshot RESIDUEATIONE.
Speaker 1: There are literally dozens of substances that could, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of fool the test, you know, and that it
Speaker 1: all has to be independently corroborated or else it's just
Speaker 1: junk science. Yes, and I even heard that you could
Speaker 1: get that from just just messing with a car battery,
Speaker 1: car battery, cigarette ash, dried urine, or also giving you
Speaker 1: a gunshot of rather do tests and he don't have
Speaker 1: one gloves right, and he's handling your hands, Well, he's
Speaker 1: doing it just transferable. So that's the flimsiest of flimsy
Speaker 1: evidence that you could have. Not evidence is a wrong word,
Speaker 1: but they call the evidence. I call it bullshit. Okay,
Speaker 1: So your prints were not found at the crime scene,
Speaker 1: and your clothes they took your clothes, right, clothes, went
Speaker 1: to the crime lab and turned up nothing. Right, So
Speaker 1: are you a ghost? You not a ghost? At that
Speaker 1: point maybe reasonable people could agree that they could have
Speaker 1: started looking for the actual perpetrator, but they continued on.
Speaker 1: Now at the scene, three footprints from size ten and
Speaker 1: a half feel a gym shoes were later discovered. And
Speaker 1: don't get me started on footprint on analysis because that's
Speaker 1: a whole another junk science. And there was no paper
Speaker 1: money only changed in the cash pheris again supposedly two
Speaker 1: seven dollars was missing. A police found five shell casings
Speaker 1: at the scene, which were from a three eighty caliber
Speaker 1: semi automatic pistol. They also found two spent bullets to
Speaker 1: bullet fragments and one live bullet. Now have you ever
Speaker 1: owned a three d caliber semi automatic pistol? Okay, So
Speaker 1: now entered Doyle Simpson. Doyle Simpson was your uncle. He
Speaker 1: reported that a pistol of this same type in caliber
Speaker 1: had been stolen from his car in the parking lot
Speaker 1: of the Angelica Garment factory where he worked. So he
Speaker 1: now came under suspicions. On July, Simpson took a polygraph
Speaker 1: test that revealed deception when he said that he's gun
Speaker 1: had been stolen from his car and when he said
Speaker 1: he knew nothing about the murders. Again, we know polygraphs
Speaker 1: are not super accurate, but they can give you some indication.
Speaker 1: But we should not take a polygraph as just gospel,
Speaker 1: because it's not. But according to the polygraph from the
Speaker 1: political where he lied about where he got the gun,
Speaker 1: and police later discovered that he called his brother asking
Speaker 1: him to lie to the police as well, telling them
Speaker 1: that he had sold the gun to Simpson, but the
Speaker 1: brother refused. He was later found out that he did
Speaker 1: about his where about that morning of those murder don't
Speaker 1: claim he was at work all morning, and his own
Speaker 1: sister said she saw his car we on eighty two,
Speaker 1: she saw him drive about that morning. Well, I can
Speaker 1: think of a couple of reasons why that could be.
Speaker 1: One would be that he wanted to deflect this fishon
Speaker 1: away from him because he was actually guilty. Or the
Speaker 1: other would be that he just was trying to like
Speaker 1: not be any part of this and so was making
Speaker 1: up a story that he was at work just to
Speaker 1: try to throw the police off even looking further into him.
Speaker 1: That was my first though. So Simpson went on to
Speaker 1: tell the cops that he practiced shooting this gun in
Speaker 1: a rural spot, but a detective went to that location
Speaker 1: and pulled the spent plug from a post, and according
Speaker 1: to the firearms expert from the Michigan State Police, David Ballast,
Speaker 1: testified that he determined that the bullet from the post
Speaker 1: actually did have marking similar to the bullets recovered from
Speaker 1: the crime scene. In August of nine, detectives led by
Speaker 1: the DA investigator John Johnson questioned Mr Simpson about their findings,
Speaker 1: but again he denied his involvement and maintained that the
Speaker 1: gun had been stolen from the car that morning. So
Speaker 1: despite the fact that they're like flashing arrows now pointing
Speaker 1: towards Simpson, right, they continued to focus on you. And
Speaker 1: now they discovered a box of size tended to half
Speaker 1: Feelers shoes at your girlfriend, Connie's house. I later found
Speaker 1: out that my girlfriend at the time, Connie head Ball
Speaker 1: her son Marcus, a pair of Feelers shoe size tend
Speaker 1: and a half. And then that's how they laid up
Speaker 1: to me wearing a pair of tennant half FeelA. Do
Speaker 1: you wear a size tenna a half feel is shoe.
Speaker 1: Most shoes that were eleven and a half dress shoe,
Speaker 1: but in gym shoes, I can't wear eleven. Well, anybody
Speaker 1: who's ever worn a shoot that's a half to a
Speaker 1: full size too small kind of report that is very uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I think it's unlikely that those were your shoes. Under
Speaker 1: any circumstances. And I'm going to say to that feelers
Speaker 1: were pretty stylish back in the late nineties, were okay.
Speaker 1: So most of the people who were questioned later on reported,
Speaker 1: and this will surprise exactly no one, They reported that
Speaker 1: they were afraid of being arrested themselves unless they cooperated
Speaker 1: with the police, and some said that rewards of up
Speaker 1: to thirty thousand dollars were dangled in front of them
Speaker 1: if they agreed to cooperate. So they were using the
Speaker 1: carrot and the stick. So they eventually, not surprisingly, got
Speaker 1: statements from a dozen different witnesses who said they saw
Speaker 1: you in various locations in and around whine Known on
Speaker 1: the morning of the crime. And based on these statements,
Speaker 1: which were almost certainly fabricated and coerced and rewarded right
Speaker 1: when you put the third dollar reward out, people that
Speaker 1: didn't even know me knew me there, and everybody saw
Speaker 1: me here and there. I'd have to be superman to
Speaker 1: be in all those places around the same time and
Speaker 1: dressed differently, right, Yeah, the winness described me wearing something different,
Speaker 1: But based on all these crazy statements that they had
Speaker 1: to try to piece together, and I've seen the map
Speaker 1: that shows your movements on that morning, Like I think
Speaker 1: I saw it sixty minutes or something. It's like, it's
Speaker 1: so ridiculous. He was zigzagging all over town, according to
Speaker 1: these in all different clothes. So they developed this crazy
Speaker 1: theory that motivated by the anger of this loss of
Speaker 1: this fantastic tardy furniture delivery job that you had, that
Speaker 1: you had walked all over town, stole Simpson's gun, walked home,
Speaker 1: walked back across town, shot and killed the four victims,
Speaker 1: robbed cash register, and then just tootled your way back home.
Speaker 1: Not a care in the world. Right now, we have
Speaker 1: to fast forward all the way to January three teenth,
Speaker 1: ninety seven, plane O, Texas. So you moved to Plano,
Speaker 1: Texas right with your girlfriend, Ms. Connie Moore. What happened
Speaker 1: at that time? I was working from three to eleven
Speaker 1: and I got up to fix myself some lunch. It
Speaker 1: was a knock at the door, and right before I
Speaker 1: grabbed the door, I saw a movement. You know, I
Speaker 1: have to patty your door. And you know it's what
Speaker 1: they call runners, you know who just in case you run.
Speaker 1: You know, they got guys set up to chase So
Speaker 1: I opened the door and uh, he said, how are
Speaker 1: you doing? I said, I'm doing okay. How are you, sir?
Speaker 1: And uh he said I'm looking for Curtis Flowers. I
Speaker 1: said that would be me. And before I could say
Speaker 1: anything else, I was all against the wall talking sheet
Speaker 1: rock moved upside, my full head being coughed, and I said, ma.
Speaker 1: I asked why am I being arrested? He said, well,
Speaker 1: we have a warrant for your arrist back in Mississippi
Speaker 1: for four counts of captain murder. This episode is underwritten
Speaker 1: by Paul Weiss Rifkin, Wharton and Garrison, a leading international
Speaker 1: law firm. Paul Weiss has long had an unwavering commitment
Speaker 1: to providing impactful, pro bono legal assistance to the most
Speaker 1: vulnerable members of our society and in support of the
Speaker 1: public interest, including extensive work in the criminal justice area.
Speaker 1: It took me back to the Mississippi where I was
Speaker 1: put in jail in Lafleur County, and that's where I
Speaker 1: sat until I went to trial in October of seven.
Speaker 1: So you get charged with four accounts of capital murder.
Speaker 1: Let's go to trial number one. Hard to believe that
Speaker 1: you had six damn trials. I mean, that's not a
Speaker 1: record that I think you ever wanted to hold or set.
Speaker 1: And it was not the winning So the first trial,
Speaker 1: they only tried you for one of the murder's birth
Speaker 1: at Tardeys. I know your attorney had tried to combine
Speaker 1: them right into one case, but of course that was denied.
Speaker 1: Everything he tried was denied pretty much, right, So the
Speaker 1: trial was moved to Lee County and the jury was
Speaker 1: get ready. Oh now, from what I understand, it was
Speaker 1: moved to Lee County because of extensive media coverage. Is
Speaker 1: that your understanding, That's what I hear. And then they
Speaker 1: claimed that I couldn't get a fair trial in my
Speaker 1: own hometown. Keep in mind, I want on it is
Speaker 1: what about Lee? I don't know the population there, but
Speaker 1: the blacks they were there, they didn't get on the jury.
Speaker 1: So it's dull in his trial tactics, you know, right,
Speaker 1: And those are called peremptory challenges, right, which is the
Speaker 1: technical term for defendants or lawyer's objection to a proposed juror,
Speaker 1: which is made without needing to give a reason. But
Speaker 1: it is illegal to exclude jurors because of their race.
Speaker 1: So they had plenty of black jurors to choose from.
Speaker 1: They just didn't choose to put any of them on
Speaker 1: your jury exactly. So now magically the prosecution had found
Speaker 1: two more witnesses, and we hear this in Getting Again
Speaker 1: right on this show. These are incentivized jail house niches,
Speaker 1: Frederick Veale and Maurice Hawkins, and they both testified that
Speaker 1: you were their sellmate while you were waiting trial, and
Speaker 1: that you admitted to committing the crime. So jail house niches,
Speaker 1: they are the most unreliable witnesses of all because they're
Speaker 1: all incentivized, and sometimes they lie about being incentivized while
Speaker 1: they're lying about overhearing these magical confessions. Right. So both
Speaker 1: of these two guys later recanted. We're just going to
Speaker 1: speculate that they may have gotten whatever they were going
Speaker 1: to get. They got with two sentenses that got rewarded
Speaker 1: in some way. So now we get to Patricia Hallman,
Speaker 1: who was a neighbor of yours, and she testified that
Speaker 1: on the morning of the crime, around seven thirty a m.
Speaker 1: She saw you going into your house in a rage.
Speaker 1: I can just picture her making up this story, Okay,
Speaker 1: And other witnesses testified to seeing you at various times
Speaker 1: that morning, including Katherine Snow, who claimed that she saw
Speaker 1: you leading against a car outside the factory where Simpson worked.
Speaker 1: Clemmie Fleming testified that she got a ride home from
Speaker 1: Roy Harris to go make a payment at Tardy Furniture,
Speaker 1: but she said she didn't go in because she was
Speaker 1: pregnant and feeling sick, so Harris drove her home. Now,
Speaker 1: why does that matter? Because she said she saw you
Speaker 1: running away from the store, and Harris said he also
Speaker 1: saw someone running but only thought it was you because
Speaker 1: Fleming said, So this this web is getting deep and deep. Bro.
Speaker 1: So now comes Jack Matthews, an investigator for the Mississippi
Speaker 1: Highway State Patrol, who testified that, based on a ledger
Speaker 1: sheet at Tardy Furniture, two seven dollars was missing from
Speaker 1: the cash draw. Now, they then came up with the
Speaker 1: theory the two fifty five dollars that was found in
Speaker 1: Connie's home your girlfriend was the same money that was
Speaker 1: missing from the furniture store. Amazing, because no one else
Speaker 1: had two hundred dollars. It must have been the same
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars. And I thought that was so crazy.
Speaker 1: Is she not allowed to save money. I mean, I
Speaker 1: imagine most people in town had a little bit of
Speaker 1: cash in their house, like they could have said, any
Speaker 1: thing could have been twenty dollars. Oh, here's the twenty
Speaker 1: from the store. What do you know? Amazing. I'm glad
Speaker 1: you could laugh about it, because I'm about to cry,
Speaker 1: for sometimes you have to lead keeping cry. Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: so then there was a forensic analyst who conducted the
Speaker 1: gunshot residue tests on your hands, which magically produced one particle,
Speaker 1: who testified that the residue certainly had to be from
Speaker 1: handling a gun and not anything else. So this is
Speaker 1: a guy who didn't know what the fun he was
Speaker 1: talking about, because we know that that's not true. Then
Speaker 1: Ballish testified, remember him from before, positive that the bullets
Speaker 1: recovered from the scene had been fired from Simpson's gun.
Speaker 1: But when testified about the ten and a half sized
Speaker 1: Pheela box found in her home, your girlfriend told the
Speaker 1: story that you had said right, that she had purchased
Speaker 1: for her son in November of and that her son
Speaker 1: took them when he moved to his father's in They
Speaker 1: could have verified that if they cared. You testified that
Speaker 1: he had started working at Hardy and Orly July six,
Speaker 1: What was your testimony with the batteries about? Like I
Speaker 1: told them, she sent me around to I think it
Speaker 1: was a task who at the time who sold her
Speaker 1: the battery. Now my job was just pick the batteries
Speaker 1: up and take them out into the country club and
Speaker 1: they're gonna put them on the golf cards. But you know,
Speaker 1: pulling off from a tasko to the batter sleep out
Speaker 1: hit the pavement and one was leaking the other one.
Speaker 1: There was nothing wrong with the better other than you know,
Speaker 1: the edges got danged up on the concrete, and uh,
Speaker 1: she said, we'll just take them back around there, and uh,
Speaker 1: I'm a call and see if they give me some
Speaker 1: type of deal on them or replace them. If they can't,
Speaker 1: then you did, I have to come out of your pay.
Speaker 1: I said, I have no problem with that, because you're right,
Speaker 1: I suppoke to time them down no offense. But that's
Speaker 1: a boring story, I mean, And it wasn't the only
Speaker 1: boring part of your day because on the day of
Speaker 1: the crime, you also testified about getting up at nine,
Speaker 1: cooking a little breakfast and on the can of short
Speaker 1: and the sister's house to get some vantages and commedian
Speaker 1: store to buy some beer and chips. It really sounds
Speaker 1: like a very average, average, average day. And you told
Speaker 1: them that you hadn't committed the crime, that you hadn't
Speaker 1: stolen the gun, and that you hadn't been running near
Speaker 1: the store at ten am. You also told them, which
Speaker 1: was again easily verifiable, that you wore size eleven Nike shoes,
Speaker 1: and that you're shot off fireworks the day before the
Speaker 1: murders and handled the lead car battery at working on
Speaker 1: the truck, which you know, you're not a scientist, but
Speaker 1: even you could figure out that these things could cause this,
Speaker 1: you know, confusion to the testing. Right. Well, I later
Speaker 1: found that out. You know, I'm just being honest about
Speaker 1: what I did. And what about alibi witnesses? Do you
Speaker 1: have any button at the first trial, only the keys
Speaker 1: and and they ruled that they didn't want to bring
Speaker 1: the keys and it because they were so young, you know,
Speaker 1: and and and dramatize them or anything like that. But
Speaker 1: there was a few people knew my whereabout. My cousin
Speaker 1: even come by the house and told me what was
Speaker 1: going on. He said, when I first heard it, all
Speaker 1: I thought about was you I thought you got killed
Speaker 1: down there, so I can't go here to check on you.
Speaker 1: And then the jury deliberated for one whole hour, one
Speaker 1: whole hour, one hour. I can't imagine what that conversation
Speaker 1: was like. The all white jury convicted you in an hour,
Speaker 1: and later that day they went ahead and imposed the
Speaker 1: death penalty. Oh man, my my world was turned upside
Speaker 1: down putting this whole and parchment is I cannot describe
Speaker 1: partment to you. If if you didn't have someone it's
Speaker 1: on the outside who love and support you, it was
Speaker 1: hard to maintain in there. Some guys just taking sheets
Speaker 1: and take it own. Live. Man. I've experienced that a
Speaker 1: lot while I was there. It's it's a bad place.
Speaker 1: So between trial went in to the jail house. Niche
Speaker 1: Mr Veale recanted his testimony, saying that he had been
Speaker 1: coerced by the prosecution and promised a piece of the reward.
Speaker 1: But Hawkins stood by his testimony. But when your attorney
Speaker 1: confronted him with the transcript of an interview he had
Speaker 1: done during which he never talked about you. In the transcript,
Speaker 1: he said that he testified quote to protect myself from
Speaker 1: doing time and getting killed. In quote in exchange for
Speaker 1: his testimony, very important hawkins Is cocaine charge was dropped
Speaker 1: and he got house arrest for burglary. I'm a guess
Speaker 1: that Mr Hawkins was a black man. Did they typically
Speaker 1: give black men house arrest for burglary in Mississippi? They
Speaker 1: do not know. I know, he answered that question. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to hear you say okay. So while the
Speaker 1: first conviction was being appealed, the second trial occurred and
Speaker 1: it was moved to Harrison County. And if this second
Speaker 1: trial was for the murder of Derek Bobo Stewart, this
Speaker 1: time the jury was made up of eleven white jurors
Speaker 1: and one black juror, so they managed to get one
Speaker 1: on there this time, but that didn't help either. But
Speaker 1: in this trial, Roy Harris, the guy who allegedly took
Speaker 1: Connie Fleming, remember her by the Tardis Furniture store, He
Speaker 1: testified again, but this time he said that he saw
Speaker 1: a man running in downtown white On at nine am
Speaker 1: s to the ten am and it Miss Fleming was
Speaker 1: not with him, which was a totally different story than
Speaker 1: he had told the first time. So he was trying
Speaker 1: to have in trouble remembering his own life, so he
Speaker 1: said that an hour later. It is hard when you
Speaker 1: lie to remember them sometimes, so he said that an
Speaker 1: hour later, round ten, Fleming had asked him to take
Speaker 1: her to Tardy Furniture, but she changed her mind. They
Speaker 1: turned around before even arriving, another change, so nothing was consistent.
Speaker 1: So Cleming Fleming's is cousins Latarsia bliss Set and Stacy
Speaker 1: Wright both testified that Fleming admitted to them that she
Speaker 1: had not seen you running from the store. Fleming's sister,
Speaker 1: mary Ella, also testified, saying that Fleming came to her
Speaker 1: house on the morning of the murders and a friend
Speaker 1: stopped over to tell them that Birtha Tardy had been killed.
Speaker 1: Mary Ella testified that she and Fleming went to Tardy Furniture,
Speaker 1: but that Fleming never mentioned seeing you that morning. There's
Speaker 1: so many holes in this, like Swiss cheese pieces. Defense
Speaker 1: also called your defense called Odel Holman Jr. Who was
Speaker 1: the brother of Patricia Halmon who testified in the first trial,
Speaker 1: and Odell Mr. Hellman Jr. Who was imprisoned on a
Speaker 1: probation violation for aggravated assault, testified that Patricia was lying,
Speaker 1: doing so at his suggestion in an attempt to cash
Speaker 1: in on the reward. The pieces are just falling off
Speaker 1: this puzzle. Nonetheless, you were convicted again on March thirty,
Speaker 1: convicted of capital murder and got death penalty again. So
Speaker 1: now we get to the reversals. In December of two thousand,
Speaker 1: the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed your first conviction. I ordered
Speaker 1: a new trial. Now, no mention was made of the
Speaker 1: racially biased jury selection, which is odd, But they did
Speaker 1: hold that your trial was unfair because the prosecution presented
Speaker 1: evidence of all four murders when you were only being
Speaker 1: tried for the murder of Miss Hardy. This led to
Speaker 1: the jury's exposure to inflammatory and prejudicial evidence. Sure they
Speaker 1: thought you were like a mass killer, right, they were
Speaker 1: price scarity. The court also noted that evans cross examination
Speaker 1: included questions that had no basis in fact and that
Speaker 1: we're in poor faith. Evans also presented information that was
Speaker 1: never in evidence. Now for the Mississippi Supreme Court to say,
Speaker 1: it's pretty strong. So in April two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: now the Mississippi Supreme Court also reversed your conviction for Mr.
Speaker 1: Stewart's murder. The court found the same issues in the
Speaker 1: first trial, naturally because it was the same prosecutor and
Speaker 1: in the same dirty tricks, emphasizing that your right to
Speaker 1: a fair trial was impossible due to the prosecution including
Speaker 1: evidence from the other murders. But still they didn't mention
Speaker 1: the racially biased jury selection, which would seem to be
Speaker 1: the most obvious thing of all. But at least they
Speaker 1: got it right for the well, they didn't get all
Speaker 1: the reasons, but they got it right for one of
Speaker 1: the reasons, or two of the reason, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: But due to these two reversals, the prosecution now decided
Speaker 1: they would do with your defense lawyer had asked for
Speaker 1: all these years ago, which was to consolidate the four cases.
Speaker 1: So trial three February two thousand and four. Now you're
Speaker 1: being tried for all four murders. This trial was this
Speaker 1: was held in Montgomery County. Now why is it? Why
Speaker 1: are we laughing? Because that's started. They moved it out
Speaker 1: of one owner then and brought it back to one on.
Speaker 1: So now all of a sudden, it's okay to try
Speaker 1: you back and wait, no, no, okay. During jury selection,
Speaker 1: the prosecution used seven of their challenges to get rid
Speaker 1: of black jurors. The defense objected correctly and contending that
Speaker 1: it was racially motivated. Could have been a coincidence, but
Speaker 1: sure do seem like it. The prosecution then used its
Speaker 1: remaining five run through challenges black people as well. The
Speaker 1: jury was ultimately composed, you guessed it, eleven white jurors
Speaker 1: at one black jury, and the one black person that
Speaker 1: managed to get on this jury was only selected because again,
Speaker 1: I don't want to insult anybody's intelligence, because you're gonna
Speaker 1: know this before I say it, but it's because they
Speaker 1: ran out of pensery challenges. The prosecution couldn't get rid
Speaker 1: of the last black person, so that person was was
Speaker 1: put on the jury, and the court ruled that this
Speaker 1: was not racially discriminatory, that they just happened to use
Speaker 1: all twelve of their challenges to get rid of black people.
Speaker 1: Crazy coincidence, though, say, and this trial was similar to
Speaker 1: the first two, but this time Mr Hallman Jr. Remember
Speaker 1: Odell Hallman Jr. Testified for the prosecution. He said that
Speaker 1: while he was in prison, you confessed to him that
Speaker 1: you committed the murders. And it wasn't until much later
Speaker 1: that we found out what his little deal was. Right,
Speaker 1: and it's crazy you right, because everybody that watches TV
Speaker 1: knows you can't bribe a witness, right, you go to
Speaker 1: jail for that ship. But they don't. They can drive
Speaker 1: all the witnesses they want, they want, and they got
Speaker 1: better bribes than anybody the outside could possibly have. I
Speaker 1: don't care if you go to somebody to say I
Speaker 1: give you a million knowledge, testify the way I want
Speaker 1: you to, they can say I'll let you out of
Speaker 1: prison exactly in his case, that's what happened. Oh boy, Okay.
Speaker 1: So February two thousand and four, the jury convicted you
Speaker 1: of all four counts of capital murder under sentence to death.
Speaker 1: Again part of leaders sitting here many times it even
Speaker 1: sends the death here. You strike me as easy to
Speaker 1: love and hard to kill. But that's just me, okay. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Three years later, on February first, two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: here goes again, the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed the convictions
Speaker 1: again and ordered a new trial. The court found that
Speaker 1: prosecution was racially discriminatory and jury selection, this time noting
Speaker 1: that the case was and I quote as strong as
Speaker 1: a prima facie case of racial discriminated as we have
Speaker 1: ever seen. That's powerful in Mississippi or anywhere. But that's crazy.
Speaker 1: So okay, now they try you again, call me kookie,
Speaker 1: But I don't think the same prosecutors should be allowed
Speaker 1: to just keep trying the same personal true again. I
Speaker 1: think that might be some way you want to take
Speaker 1: a look at. But this time the jury consisted of
Speaker 1: seven white and five black jurors. They gave me a
Speaker 1: little December fIF thousand seven, a miss trial was declared
Speaker 1: as the jury could not reach a verdict and get
Speaker 1: ready for another shocker surprise ending seven white numbers of
Speaker 1: the jury voted to convict and the five black members
Speaker 1: voted to a quit. I don't even have the right
Speaker 1: words for that. So here comes trial number five, September
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. This time the jury was made up
Speaker 1: of nine white and three black members. The jury ended
Speaker 1: up in another mistrial, this time voting eleven to one
Speaker 1: to convict. The one the centing person was a black person.
Speaker 1: And comes trial number six and summer of two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten, And this time the jury was composed of
Speaker 1: eleven white in one black member, and they found you
Speaker 1: guilty on all four accounts of capital murder. Again on
Speaker 1: June eighteenth to two thousand and ten and sends you
Speaker 1: to death again. And now we get to the post
Speaker 1: post post post post post. It took me a long
Speaker 1: time just to say that, and you had to live it.
Speaker 1: It's conviction litigation. So you were represented now by Kireweebel
Speaker 1: and Sherry Lynn Johnson from the Cornell Law School Death
Speaker 1: Penalty Clinic, and they appealed your conviction and in two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the convictions and
Speaker 1: death sentence. Is it. The team sought review in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court and in two thousand sixteen they ordered the
Speaker 1: Mississippi Supreme Court to review the possibly racially discriminatory jury selection.
Speaker 1: In November two thousand seventeen, that was ruled I'm getting
Speaker 1: the jails again. It was ruled by a five to
Speaker 1: four vote that there was no discrimination. Um, the most
Speaker 1: polite way I can think of to say, this is
Speaker 1: what the fun they're talking about? I think I think
Speaker 1: I did say it that way went out for her
Speaker 1: that you know, it's sad, it really is. But your
Speaker 1: team appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court again, and
Speaker 1: this is when American Public Media a PM started their investigation,
Speaker 1: and they did as we talked about the podcast in
Speaker 1: the Dark, and this podcast began in May two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: and it was a big hit, a big, big hit,
Speaker 1: and the things they uncovered shocking. Fleming now said her
Speaker 1: testimonies and all that the trial relies. She confessed that
Speaker 1: quote the whole this is her quote. The whole time,
Speaker 1: I've been telling them, I don't remember the day. The
Speaker 1: whole time I've been telling them, I don't remember the day.
Speaker 1: I've been confused of the day from the beginning. I
Speaker 1: just didn't know how to say it. I was scared
Speaker 1: I was going to jail. Wow, okay. Odell Hallman also recanting,
Speaker 1: saying that everything was all make believe on his part,
Speaker 1: and he also said that Evans dropped the drug charges
Speaker 1: penning against him and offered him other legal assistance. Roy Harris,
Speaker 1: who was the friend and driver of Clemmie Fleming, told
Speaker 1: the podcast that police had showed him a photo of you,
Speaker 1: and Harris said that the man he saw running away
Speaker 1: was not you exactly. Eventually he thought he was going
Speaker 1: to get arrested if he didn't say it was you,
Speaker 1: So we did. Edward mccristian also recanted his testimony that
Speaker 1: he was sitting on the porch at seven th eight
Speaker 1: am when you supposedly allegedly walked past his house from
Speaker 1: your uncle Doyle Simpson's workplace, the garment factory, where the
Speaker 1: testimony had tied you to the alleged stolen gun. So
Speaker 1: all those lies are now unraveling. So in June two
Speaker 1: thousand and nineteen, the U. S. Supreme Court reversed your
Speaker 1: convictions and death sentences by a vote of seven to two.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. It ruled that the prosecution had engaged in
Speaker 1: racially discriminatory jury selection because they had struck forty one
Speaker 1: of the forty two black perspective jurors in the six
Speaker 1: trials combined. So shery Lyn Johnson had made the argument
Speaker 1: that led to the U. Supreme Court decision to reversee.
Speaker 1: She argued that your case should be dismissed and not
Speaker 1: brought to a seventh trial. Should be obvious to anybody,
Speaker 1: as you had already spent over twenty years now on
Speaker 1: death row, and that the evidence against you was basically advantaged.
Speaker 1: It was not exist it never had existed, but now
Speaker 1: it has proven that it had never existed. The watching
Speaker 1: d C law firm of Hogan Lovell's, as well as
Speaker 1: the friend of the show, the director of the Mississippi
Speaker 1: Innocence Project, Tucker Carrington at the Mississippi Office of Post
Speaker 1: Conviction Council, got involved, as well as attorneys Rob McDuff
Speaker 1: we know him, and Henderson Hill. They all began preparing
Speaker 1: for a possible retrial. Now you had the Dream Team
Speaker 1: Avengers yea. And in December sixty nineteen you were finally
Speaker 1: released to home confinement to wait for your seventh trial.
Speaker 1: This had been almost twenty three years in prison, right right,
Speaker 1: What do you remember about that day? I was nervous,
Speaker 1: you know, you know I would have been so close
Speaker 1: to home all the years and never made it, you know.
Speaker 1: And at that time, I was like, I don't see
Speaker 1: him giving me bail, letting me go home, you know,
Speaker 1: until they decide what they want to do, where they
Speaker 1: want to have a seventh trial or not. But we
Speaker 1: got in the courtroom, you know, and the Gifts didn't
Speaker 1: even show up that day. He's sending his assistant, Jorge
Speaker 1: Lober talking. He got started in about the d A
Speaker 1: not showing up. You know, I would expect him to
Speaker 1: be here, you know. And and the more he talked,
Speaker 1: the bet I felt. And when we talked about the
Speaker 1: and and he said, you know, at this time, you know,
Speaker 1: I am going to Grantville. Where'd you're going? Text is
Speaker 1: back to Plano Plano two sisters. Yes, what was your
Speaker 1: first meal when you got out? Oh? Man? I had
Speaker 1: fried fish, catfish, hush public french fried coldslaw. And he
Speaker 1: was a funny thing too, be called. We were in
Speaker 1: the restroom, me, my brother in law and has been
Speaker 1: like seven and eight other guy. So I'm standing at
Speaker 1: the urinal and you know, relieved myself. So I get through.
Speaker 1: I'm looking for the handle, and everybody was saying, just
Speaker 1: just walk away. I said, no, that's rude. You don't
Speaker 1: leak in a urinal and just walk away. I said
Speaker 1: later on that could start smelling. You know, everybody, Hey,
Speaker 1: just walk away. I stepped back and flushed itself and
Speaker 1: I had to walk back up to it and look
Speaker 1: at it, you know. And one of the guys in there,
Speaker 1: the white guy, he said, I don't know where you're being,
Speaker 1: but you've been going for a long time. As I yes,
Speaker 1: I am, and I'm watching my hand and as my
Speaker 1: brother and I walked back through the restaurant dry my
Speaker 1: hands and everything, people would just stop at me, It's
Speaker 1: gonna be okay, And I guess they would. They gotten
Speaker 1: told the wives and everything about what happened in the bathroom,
Speaker 1: you know, and people just tell me it's gonna be okay. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, And it was funny and emotion at the
Speaker 1: same time. On December sixteen, you were released to home
Speaker 1: confinement waiting for the seventh trial, like we talked about.
Speaker 1: And then in January, Evans stepped off the case and
Speaker 1: the Attorney General's office began reviewing it. So and sure enough,
Speaker 1: on September four, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced that
Speaker 1: the charges were going to be dismissed, and you stated,
Speaker 1: I'm now I'm gonna quote you even though you're sitting
Speaker 1: right here in front of me. Today, I am finally
Speaker 1: free from the injustice that left me locked in a
Speaker 1: box for twenty three year. Oh. I felt like doing flips.
Speaker 1: You know, big guy like me shouldn't be doing flips.
Speaker 1: But but it's happiness. I can't even describe. You're here,
Speaker 1: Jewish Loper say, you know I dismissed this case with prejudice.
Speaker 1: M hm, yes, and you know, and at the time
Speaker 1: the words didn't wring on me. And someone told me
Speaker 1: he said, when he said with prejudice, that means that
Speaker 1: they can never try you again. Yeah, that's beautiful and
Speaker 1: it's funny because prejudice is usually a bad word. Is
Speaker 1: the only instance I can think of when it's a
Speaker 1: good word. So in the meantime, it's great to see
Speaker 1: you out here living your best life, married, you know, traveling.
Speaker 1: What can our listeners do to show support. I do
Speaker 1: have a go fund me out there, so yes, we'll
Speaker 1: have it linked in the bio. So now, Mr Flowers,
Speaker 1: we have a segment of our show that I love
Speaker 1: the most, which is called Closing Arguments. It works like this.
Speaker 1: First of all, I again thank you for just being
Speaker 1: you and and being here in the studio with me.
Speaker 1: And then I turned my microphone off, kick back in
Speaker 1: my chair and sometimes I close my eyes and just
Speaker 1: listen to anything else you have to say. It's called
Speaker 1: closing arguments, and you have the mike and you can
Speaker 1: just talk about anything you think you want to share.
Speaker 1: But I would first like to thank you all for
Speaker 1: having me. Uh, and I think you also got I
Speaker 1: really do and look forward to hanging out with you.
Speaker 1: To all the listeners are I asked that we strive
Speaker 1: a change, you know, and and make this a better place.
Speaker 1: I think we all should get along and love one
Speaker 1: another and not hate for no reason at all. You know. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna lead back guy. I'm easy to get along with.
Speaker 1: I would like to send shout out to all the victims,
Speaker 1: family and and I hope one day soon did they
Speaker 1: find the real guy. Thank you for listening to Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction with Jason Flam. Please support your local innocence projects
Speaker 1: and go to the link in our bio to see
Speaker 1: how you can help. I'd like to thank our production
Speaker 1: team Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburne and Kevin Warns. The music
Speaker 1: on the show, as always, is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one