Speaker 1: Curtis Flowers lived in the small town of Winona, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: and began a job at Tarti Furniture, but while transporting
Speaker 1: some car batteries, two of them fell off his truck,
Speaker 1: and store owner Bertha Tarti said that the damages might
Speaker 1: have to come out of his paycheck. After a full
Speaker 1: day of work, Curtis decided to cut his losses and
Speaker 1: move on. On the morning of July sixteenth, nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: the bodies of Bertha Tarti 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 attorney's murder. While that conviction was being thrown out.
Speaker 1: He was convicted for the murder of one of the
Speaker 1: other employees, and when the second conviction was thrown out,
Speaker 1: they tried him again for all four murders. After six
Speaker 1: trials and a trip to the Supreme Court, this farce
Speaker 1: would finally come to an end when American Public Media
Speaker 1: made a podcast called in the Dark Shining Up Bright
Speaker 1: Light on Curtis's case and the racist district attorney driving it.
Speaker 1: After twenty three long years on death row and another
Speaker 1: trip to the Supreme Court, district Attorney Doug Evans finally
Speaker 1: stepped off the case. Upon review, the Attorney General of
Speaker 1: Mississippi dropped all charges. This is wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to throw a few numbers at you before I
Speaker 1: introduce our guests. So Curtis Flowers was wrongfully convicted six times,
Speaker 1: spent twenty three years on death row for four murders
Speaker 1: that he didn't commit. Curtis Flowers, Welcome to wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: Good to be here. So let's go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: You grew up in a small town in Mississippi, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, one only is about eighty four miles north of Jacksonssissippi,
Speaker 2: a small town about the population of five thousand, over
Speaker 2: forty five percent black.
Speaker 1: Did you have a happy childhood? Yes, I did. Brothers, sisters, brothers.
Speaker 2: I have four sisters, one brother. I'm the I guess
Speaker 2: you'd call the middle child.
Speaker 1: So everything was pretty much fine, I guess up until
Speaker 1: would seemed like a very minor incident at a store
Speaker 1: that you only worked at for a few days. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about Tardy Furniture, which should have come and went
Speaker 1: and never been a subject of even one little minor discussion. True. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: since it was the incident that started this crazy chain
Speaker 1: of events going, can you just tell us what happened
Speaker 1: at Tarti Furniture.
Speaker 2: Well, I went to work at Tarti's one morning and
Speaker 2: she asked me to pull around back so then the
Speaker 2: business next door could load some batteries onto the truck
Speaker 2: and leaving. I pulled off, and two of the batteries
Speaker 2: slid off the truck. I got back to the store,
Speaker 2: I told her about them. She said, we'll take them
Speaker 2: back around there and let me see if they can
Speaker 2: replace them.
Speaker 1: Because if they.
Speaker 2: Can't, then you don't have to pay for them, because
Speaker 2: she should have tied them down. And I said, okay,
Speaker 2: So I took them back. Mister Jimmy Sanders, who worked there,
Speaker 2: told me that we'll work it out. So I went
Speaker 2: back and told her everything was good. You know, she
Speaker 2: sent me home to deliver furniture all day that day,
Speaker 2: you know, by me just starting. You know, she even
Speaker 2: advanced me. I think it was thirty dollars.
Speaker 1: You didn't go back to work at the store after that, No,
Speaker 1: I didn't. It's okay, fine, whatever.
Speaker 2: And later it became a motive, right, like this little
Speaker 2: minor incident was going to cause you to go back
Speaker 2: and shoot four people in the head.
Speaker 1: So now, unbeknownst to you, a terrible, terrible thing happens
Speaker 1: right at Tarti Furnish On the morning of July sixteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six. Sam Jones Junior, a retired employee of
Speaker 1: Tarti Furniture Company, reported that the owner of Bertha Tarti,
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, a forty two yar old man.
Speaker 1: Jones arrived an hour later and found a horror scene.
Speaker 1: He found that Tarti, Stuart, Golden, and another employee named
Speaker 1: Carmen Rigby, a forty five year old woman, had all
Speaker 1: been shot and killed. Well one of them, sixteen year
Speaker 1: old mister Stuart, was the only one still alive, but
Speaker 1: he died in the hospital a few days later, and
Speaker 1: supposedly two hundred and eighty seven dollars was missing from
Speaker 1: the cash reder. So that gives me the chills because
Speaker 1: it's just what's the price of a life? And may
Speaker 1: they rest in peace. So it's just this crazy coincidence.
Speaker 1: The smallest town like that, you know 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 exactly, 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 APM for the podcast discovered
Speaker 1: that Evans and his assistant DA's over the course of
Speaker 1: twenty six years struck black prospective jurors at nearly four
Speaker 1: and a half times the rate they struck white ones.
Speaker 1: And of course we know that's one of the main
Speaker 1: reasons why your conviction kept getting overturned, because he kept
Speaker 1: excluding black jurors from the jurys, which is of course
Speaker 1: a violation of the fourteenth Amendment. This is a guy
Speaker 1: who was elected again in November twenty nineteen, so he's
Speaker 1: been in there forever still the DA, but numerous civil
Speaker 1: rights lawsuits have been filed against him. But according to
Speaker 1: the Mississippi Bar Association, it's hard to believe he's received
Speaker 1: no public sanction and remains a lawyer in good standing.
Speaker 1: So let's let's go back. Let's go back. Hold on,
Speaker 1: So the crime took place on July sixteenth, nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: When did you even hear about it?
Speaker 2: The same day they come by the house, want to
Speaker 2: know if they could talk with me. They say to
Speaker 2: her that I used to work there and maybe I
Speaker 2: could help them. You know, maybe I've seen something and
Speaker 2: don't realize us I saw it, and I said sure.
Speaker 2: I went down with him until you know, every time
Speaker 2: I left. You know what we talked about here today,
Speaker 2: don't don't tell anyone else. And we would just want
Speaker 2: you to know you're not a suspect. We just we
Speaker 2: just thought maybe you could help.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So I said, okay, But everyone on the street was
Speaker 2: telling me that when they talked with him, they said
Speaker 2: I was a suspect.
Speaker 1: They tested your hands for gunshot wresid.
Speaker 2: Testing my hands for gunshot rest to do the morning
Speaker 2: they picked me up, I wanted to question me. They
Speaker 2: wanted to rule me out, so he said, and I agreed,
Speaker 2: and I agreed to a gunshot residue tests and they
Speaker 2: gave it to me. And later they come back and
Speaker 2: said they I think one particle of gunshot residue. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't know anything about residue. But my lawyer argued
Speaker 2: that there are three elements to gunshot residue. You can't
Speaker 2: have one without the other two. And he asked them, well,
Speaker 2: how did miss Flower get to the police station and
Speaker 2: I got down there, would stayed true, he says, in't
Speaker 2: it true? They fired their weapons every morning and miss
Speaker 2: Flowers shook hands with them, so he could have picked
Speaker 2: up that particle just.
Speaker 1: Like that, or could have come from a firework. No,
Speaker 1: And we have a whole episode of our show for
Speaker 1: conviction John Science devoted to a gunshot residue issue out
Speaker 1: There are literally dozens of substances that could, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of fool the test, you know, and that all
Speaker 1: has to be independently corroborated or else it's just junk science.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I even heard that you could get that
Speaker 2: from just just messing with a car battery.
Speaker 1: Car battery, cigarette, ash drive urine.
Speaker 2: Or also giving you a gunshot of rether do tests
Speaker 2: and he don't have one gloves right, and he's handling
Speaker 2: your hands while he's doing it.
Speaker 1: Sure it's transferable. Yeah, So that's the flimsiest of flimsy
Speaker 1: evidence that you could have not evident is the wrong word,
Speaker 1: but they call it 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, nothing right,
Speaker 1: So are you a ghost? You don't see what? Not
Speaker 1: a ghost? Okay? So at that point maybe reasonable people
Speaker 1: could agree that they could have started looking for the
Speaker 1: actual perpetrator, but they continued on. Now at the scene,
Speaker 1: three footprints from size ten and a half feel a
Speaker 1: gym shoes were later discovered. And don't even get me
Speaker 1: started on footprint analysis because that's a whole other junk science.
Speaker 1: And there was no paper money, only changing the cashhers again,
Speaker 1: supposedly two hundred eighty seven dollars was missing. At least
Speaker 1: found five shellcasings at the scene, which were from a
Speaker 1: three eighty caliber semi automatic pistol. They also found two
Speaker 1: spent bullets, two bullet fragments, and one live bullet. Now
Speaker 1: have you ever owned a three eighty caliber semi automatic pistol? Okay?
Speaker 1: So now enter Doyle Simpson. Doyle Simpson was your uncle.
Speaker 1: He reported that a pistol of this same type in
Speaker 1: caliber had been stolen from his car in the parking
Speaker 1: lot of the Angelica Garment factory where he worked. So
Speaker 1: he now came under suspicion. On July twenty second, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six, Simpson took a polygraph test that revealed deception
Speaker 1: when he said that his gun had been stolen from
Speaker 1: his car and when he said he knew nothing about
Speaker 1: the murders. Again, we know polygraphs are not super accurate,
Speaker 1: but they can give you some indication. But we should
Speaker 1: not take a polygraph as just gospel, because it's not.
Speaker 1: But according to the polygraph and the poligapher, he lied
Speaker 1: about where he got the gun, and police later discovered
Speaker 1: that he called his brother asking him to lie to
Speaker 1: the police as well, telling them that he had sold
Speaker 1: the gun to Simpson, but the brother refused.
Speaker 2: It was later found out that he did a lot
Speaker 2: about his swhere about that morning of those murder dog
Speaker 2: claimed he was at work all morning. His own sister
Speaker 2: said she saw his car we out on eighty two.
Speaker 2: She saw him drive by that morning.
Speaker 1: Well, I can think of a couple of reasons why
Speaker 1: that could be. One would be that he wanted to
Speaker 1: deflect this vision away from him because he was actually guilty.
Speaker 1: Or the other would be that he just was trying
Speaker 1: to like not be any part of this and so
Speaker 1: was making up a story that he was at work
Speaker 1: just to try to throw the police off even looking
Speaker 1: further into him. That was my first thought. So Simpson
Speaker 1: went on to tell the cops that he practiced shooting
Speaker 1: this gun in a rural spot. But a detective went
Speaker 1: to that location and pulled the spent plug from a post,
Speaker 1: and according to firearms expert for the Michigan State Police,
Speaker 1: David Bolish, testified that he determined that the bullet from
Speaker 1: the post actually did have marking similar to the bullets
Speaker 1: recovered from the crime scene. In August of ninety six,
Speaker 1: detectives led by the DA investigator John Johnson questioned mister
Speaker 1: Simpson about their findings, but again he denied his involvement
Speaker 1: and maintained that the gun had been stolen from the
Speaker 1: car that morning. So despite the fact that there are
Speaker 1: like flashing arrows now pointing towards Simpson right, they continued
Speaker 1: to focus on you. And now they discovered a box
Speaker 1: of size ten and a half Feel of shoes at
Speaker 1: your girlfriend, Connie's house.
Speaker 2: I later found out that my girlfriend at the time, Connie,
Speaker 2: had bought her son Marcus, a pair of Feel of
Speaker 2: shoes size ten and a half, And then that's how
Speaker 2: they led up to me wearing a pair of ten
Speaker 2: and a half Fela.
Speaker 1: Do you wear a size ten and a half feel
Speaker 1: a shoe.
Speaker 2: Most shoes, I wear eleven and a half your shoe,
Speaker 2: but in gym shoes, I can't wear eleven.
Speaker 1: Well, anybody who's ever worn a shoe that's a half
Speaker 1: to a full size too small can report that is
Speaker 1: not very uncomfortable. So I think it's unlikely that those
Speaker 1: were your shoes under any circumstances. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: say too that feelers were pretty stylish back in the
Speaker 1: late nineties. They were okay. So most of the people
Speaker 1: who were questioned later on reported, and this will surprise
Speaker 1: exactly no one, they reported that they were afraid of
Speaker 1: being arrested themselves unless they cooperated with the police, and
Speaker 1: some said that rewards of up to thirty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: were dangled in front of them if they agreed to cooperate.
Speaker 1: So they were using the carrot and tostick. So they eventually,
Speaker 1: not surprisingly, got statements from a dozen different witnesses who
Speaker 1: said they saw you in various locations in and around
Speaker 1: why Nona on the morning of the crime. And based
Speaker 1: on these statements, which were almost certainly fabricated and coerced,
Speaker 1: and rewarded. Right when you put the third down dollar
Speaker 1: reward out.
Speaker 2: People that didn't even know me knew me then, and
Speaker 2: everybody saw me here and there. I'd have to be
Speaker 2: superman to be in all those places around the same
Speaker 2: time and dressed differently, right, yes, each witness described me
Speaker 2: wearing something.
Speaker 1: Different, but based on all these crazy statements that they
Speaker 1: had to try to piece together. And I've seen the
Speaker 1: map that shows your movements on that morning, like I
Speaker 1: think I saw it in sixty minutes or something. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's so ridiculous. You were zigzagging all over town, according
Speaker 1: to 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 it, killed the four victims,
Speaker 1: robbed the cash register, and then just tootled your way
Speaker 1: back home, my way. Not a care, not a cure
Speaker 1: in the world. Right now, we have to fast forward
Speaker 1: all the way. Sid January third teenth, nineteen ninety seven, Plano, Texas.
Speaker 1: So you moved to Plano Texas right yes, with your
Speaker 1: girlfriend MSUs Connie Moore. What happened that the time I.
Speaker 2: Was working from three to eleven and I got up
Speaker 2: to fix myself some lunch. There was a knock at
Speaker 2: the door, and right before I grabbed the door, I
Speaker 2: saw a movement you know, out the pat of your door.
Speaker 2: And you know it's what they call runners, you know
Speaker 2: who just in case you run. You know, they got
Speaker 2: guys set up to chase. So I opened the door
Speaker 2: and he said how are you doing? I said, I'm
Speaker 2: doing okay.
Speaker 1: How are you, sir?
Speaker 2: And he said I'm looking for Curtis Flowers. I said
Speaker 2: that would be me, And before I could say anything else,
Speaker 2: I was all against the wall.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about sheet.
Speaker 2: Rock mood upside my full head being cuffed and I said,
Speaker 2: may I ask why am I being arrested? He said, well,
Speaker 2: we have a warrant for your arrest back in Mississippi
Speaker 2: for four counts of captain murder.
Speaker 1: This episode is underwritten by Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Porton and Garrison,
Speaker 1: a leading international law firm. Paul Weiss has long had
Speaker 1: an unwavering commitment to providing impactful pro bono legal assistance
Speaker 1: to the most vulnerable members of our society and in
Speaker 1: support of the public interest, including extensive work in the
Speaker 1: criminal justice area.
Speaker 2: They took me back to the Mississippi where I was
Speaker 2: put in jail in Lafour County, and that's where I
Speaker 2: sat until I went to trial in October of ninety seven.
Speaker 1: So you get charged with four counts 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 Attartey,
Speaker 1: So I know your attorney had tried to combine them
Speaker 1: right into one case, but of course that was denied.
Speaker 1: Everything he tried was denied pretty much. So the trial
Speaker 1: was moved to Lee County and the jury was get
Speaker 1: ready all wait. 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 heard.
Speaker 2: And then they claimed that I couldn't get a fair
Speaker 2: trial in my own hometown. Keep in mind, I went
Speaker 2: on it is forty five black What about Lee. I
Speaker 2: don't know the population there, but the blacks that were there,
Speaker 2: they didn't get on the juror. So it's due in
Speaker 2: 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. Yes,
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 again and again
Speaker 1: right on this show. These are incentivized jail house nitches,
Speaker 1: Frederick Veal and Maurice Hawkins. And they both testified that
Speaker 1: you were their cellmate while you were waiting trial, and
Speaker 1: that you admitted to committing the crime. So jail house nitches,
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 reduced senses that got rewarded in
Speaker 1: some way. So now we get to Patricia Hallman, who
Speaker 1: was a neighbor of yours, and she testified that on
Speaker 1: the morning of the crime, around seven thirty am, she
Speaker 1: saw you going into your house in a rage. I
Speaker 1: can just picture her making up this story, okay. And
Speaker 1: other witnesses testified to seeing you at various times that morning,
Speaker 1: including Catherine Snow, who claimed that she saw you leaning
Speaker 1: against the car outside the factory where Simpson worked. Clemmy
Speaker 1: Fleming testified that she got a ride home from Roy
Speaker 1: Harris to go make a payment at Tardy Furniture, but
Speaker 1: she said she didn't go in because she was pregnant
Speaker 1: and feeling sick, so Harris drove her home. Now, why
Speaker 1: does that matter, because she said she saw you running
Speaker 1: away from the store, and Harris said he also saw
Speaker 1: someone running but only thought it was you because Fleming said,
Speaker 1: so this web is getting deep and deeper. So now
Speaker 1: comes Jack Matthews, an investigator for the Mississippi Highway State Patrol,
Speaker 1: who testified that based on a ledger sheet at Tardy Furniture,
Speaker 1: two hundred eighty seven dollars was missing from the cash straw. Now,
Speaker 1: they then came up with a theory, the two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty five dollars that was found in Connie's home
Speaker 1: your girlfriend was the same money that was missing for
Speaker 1: the furniture store. Amazing, because no one else had two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars in it must have been the same two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: And I thought that was so crazy. Is she not
Speaker 2: allowed to save money?
Speaker 1: I mean, I imagine most people in town had a little
Speaker 1: bit of cash in their house, like they could have said, hey, thing,
Speaker 1: I agree, could have been twenty dollars. Oh, here's the
Speaker 1: twenty from the store. What do you know? Amazing. I'm
Speaker 1: glad you could laugh about it because I'm about to cry.
Speaker 1: A forensic sometimes you have the lad keep him crying, Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: so then there was a forensic analyst who conducted the
Speaker 1: gunshot residue test 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 fuck he was
Speaker 1: talking about, because we know that that's not true. True.
Speaker 1: Then Ballish testified, remember him from before, one hundred percent
Speaker 1: positive that the bullets recovered from the scene had been
Speaker 1: fired from Simpson's gun. But when testified about the ten
Speaker 1: and a half size feel a box found in her home,
Speaker 1: your girlfriend told the story that you had said right,
Speaker 1: She had purchased for her son in November of ninety five,
Speaker 1: and that her son took them when he moved to
Speaker 1: his father's in ninety six. They could have verified that
Speaker 1: if they cared exactly, you testified that he would start
Speaker 1: working at Tardi or July ninety six. What was your
Speaker 1: testimony with the batteries about, Like I.
Speaker 2: Told them, she sent me around to I think it
Speaker 2: was a tasko at the time who sold her the batteries. Now,
Speaker 2: my job was to just pick the batteries up and
Speaker 2: take them out to the country club, and they were
Speaker 2: going to put them on the golf carts. But you know,
Speaker 2: pulling off from a tasko to the battery slid out.
Speaker 2: He hit the payment and one was leaking the other one.
Speaker 2: There was nothing wrong with the battery other than you know,
Speaker 2: the ages got danged up on the concrete, and she said, well,
Speaker 2: just take them back around there and I'm gonna call
Speaker 2: and see if they give me some type of deal
Speaker 2: on them or replace them. If they can't, then you debt.
Speaker 2: I have to come out of your pain. I said,
Speaker 2: I have no problem with that, because I was you right.
Speaker 2: I spoke to time down no offense. But that's a
Speaker 2: boring ass story. I mean, yes it is.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't the only boring part of your day,
Speaker 1: because on the day of the crime, you also testified
Speaker 1: about getting up at nine cooking a little breakfast yeah,
Speaker 1: hand on a can of short yeah, the sister's house
Speaker 1: to get some bandages, and convenience store to buy some
Speaker 1: beer and chips. It really sounds like a very average,
Speaker 1: average day, average day. And you told them that you
Speaker 1: hadn't committed the crime, they hadn't stolen the gun, and
Speaker 1: that you hadn't been running near the store at ten am. True.
Speaker 1: You also told them, which was again easily verifiable, that
Speaker 1: you wore size eleven Nike shoes, and that you shot
Speaker 1: off fireworks the day before the murders and handled the
Speaker 1: lead car battery. I working on the truck, which you
Speaker 1: know you're not a scientist, but even you could figure
Speaker 1: out that these things could cause this, you know, confusion
Speaker 1: to the testing.
Speaker 2: Well, I later found that out. You know, I'm just
Speaker 2: being honest about what I did.
Speaker 1: And what about alibi witnesses? Do you have any alibi?
Speaker 2: But just at the first trial, only the keys, and
Speaker 2: they brewed that they didn't want to bring the keys
Speaker 2: in it because they were so young, you know, and
Speaker 2: dramatism or anything like that. But there was a few
Speaker 2: people wo knew my where about them. My cousin even
Speaker 2: come by the house and told me what was going on.
Speaker 2: He said, when I first heard it, all I thought
Speaker 2: about was you. I thought you got killed down there,
Speaker 2: so I can't over 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.
Speaker 2: Oh man, my word was turned upside down. Put it
Speaker 2: in this whole and parchment is I cannot describe portion
Speaker 2: to you. If you didn't have someone on the outside
Speaker 2: who love and support you, it was hard to maintain
Speaker 2: in there. Them guys just taking sheets and taking their
Speaker 2: own live and I've experienced that a lot while I
Speaker 2: was there. It's a bad place.
Speaker 1: So between Trot one and two the jail house niche
Speaker 1: mister 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 end quote. In exchange for
Speaker 1: his testimony, very important, Hawkins's cocaine charge was dropped and
Speaker 1: he got house arrests for burglary. I guess that mister
Speaker 1: Hawkins was a black man. Did they typically give black
Speaker 1: men house arrest for burglary in Mississippi? No, I need
Speaker 1: to answer that question. I just wanted to hear you
Speaker 1: say it, okay. So while the first conviction was being appealed,
Speaker 1: a second trial occurred and it was moved to Harrison County,
Speaker 1: and this second trial was for the murder of Derek
Speaker 1: Bobo Stewart. This time the jury was made up of
Speaker 1: eleven white jurors and one black juror, so they managed
Speaker 1: to get one on there this time, but that didn't
Speaker 1: help either. But in this trial, Roy Harris, the guy
Speaker 1: who allegedly took Connie Fleming, remember her by the Tarti's
Speaker 1: Furniture store. Yes, he testified again, but this time he
Speaker 1: said that he saw a man running in downtown Winona
Speaker 1: at nine am instead of ten am, and it Miss
Speaker 1: Fleming was not with him, which was a totally different
Speaker 1: story than he had told the first time. Well, so
Speaker 1: he was trying to have in trouble remembering his own lie,
Speaker 1: so he said that an hour later. It is hard
Speaker 1: when you lie to remember them sometimes, so he said
Speaker 1: that an hour later, around ten, Fleming had asked him
Speaker 1: to take her to Tardi Furniture, but she changed her mind.
Speaker 1: They turned around before even arriving, another change, so nothing
Speaker 1: was consistent. So Cleming flemings is cousins Latarsha Blissett and
Speaker 1: Stacy Wright both testified that Fleming admitted to them that
Speaker 1: she had not seen you running from the store. Fleming's
Speaker 1: sister Mary Ella also testified, saying that Fleming came to
Speaker 1: her house on the morning of the murders, and a
Speaker 1: friend stopped over to tell them that Bertha Tarti had
Speaker 1: been killed. Mary Ella testified that she and Fleming went
Speaker 1: to Tardi Furniture, but that Fleming never mentioned seeing you
Speaker 1: that morning. There's so many holes in this like Swiss cheese.
Speaker 1: A few pieces defense also called your defense called O'Dell
Speaker 1: Homman Junior, who was the brother of Patricia Hammond who
Speaker 1: testified in the first trial, and Odell mister Holman Junior,
Speaker 1: who was imprisoned on a provation violation for aggravated assault,
Speaker 1: testified that Patricia was lying, doing so at his suggestion
Speaker 1: in an attempt to cash in on the reward. The
Speaker 1: pieces are just falling off this puzzle, you know they are. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: you were convicted again on March thirtieth, nineteen ninety nine,
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 in 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 Tardy. 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: probably scared to you. The court also noted that Evans's
Speaker 1: cross examination included questions that had no basis in fact
Speaker 1: and that were in poor faith. Evans also presented information
Speaker 1: that was never in evidence. Now for the Mississippi Supreme
Speaker 1: Court to say, it's pretty strong. So in April two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, now, the Mississippi Supreme Court also reversed
Speaker 1: your conviction for mister Stewart's murder. The court found the
Speaker 1: same issues in the first trial, naturally because it was
Speaker 1: the same prosecutor. They're in the same dirty tricks, emphasizing
Speaker 1: that your right to a fair trial was impossible due
Speaker 1: to the prosecution including evidence from the other murders. But
Speaker 1: still they didn't mention the racially biased jury selection, which
Speaker 1: would seem to be the most obvious thing of all.
Speaker 1: But at least they got it right for the Well,
Speaker 1: they didn't get all the reasons, but they got it
Speaker 1: right for one of the reasons or two of the reason,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. But due to these two reversals, the
Speaker 1: prosecution now decided they would do what your defense larder
Speaker 1: to ask for all his years ago, which was to
Speaker 1: consolidate the four cases. So trial three February two thousand
Speaker 1: and four. Now you're being tried for all four murders.
Speaker 1: This trial was held, was held. This was held in
Speaker 1: Montgomery County. Now why is it? Why are we laughing?
Speaker 2: Because that's when it started. They moved it out of
Speaker 2: one owner and it brought it back to one on them.
Speaker 2: So now all of a sudden, it's okay to try
Speaker 2: you back? And why knowing okay?
Speaker 1: During jury selection, the prosecution used seven of their challenges
Speaker 1: to get rid of black jurors. The defense objected correctly,
Speaker 1: contending that it was racially motivated, could have been a coincidence,
Speaker 1: but sure liked. The prosecution then used its remaining five
Speaker 1: run three challenges black people as well. The jury was
Speaker 1: ultimately composed, you guessed it, eleven white jurors and one
Speaker 1: black juror. Yes, And the one black person that managed
Speaker 1: to get on this jury was only selected because again,
Speaker 1: I don't want to insult anybody's intelligence, because you're going
Speaker 1: to know this before I say it, But it's because
Speaker 1: they ran out of parentory challenges. The prosecution couldn't get
Speaker 1: rid of the last black person, so that person 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 mister Hammond Junior, remember
Speaker 1: Odell Hollmon Junior, 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, Yes,
Speaker 1: and it's crazy, right because everybody that watches TV knows
Speaker 1: you can't bribe a witness, right you go to jail
Speaker 1: for that shit you do. But they don't. They can
Speaker 1: drive all the witnesses they want, all they want, and
Speaker 1: they got better bribes than anybody the outside could possibly have.
Speaker 1: I don't care if you go to somebody who say
Speaker 1: I give you a million knowledge, testify the way I
Speaker 1: want you to, they can say I'll let you out
Speaker 1: of 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 council capital murder and your sentenced to
Speaker 1: death again. Harder believe you're sitting here as many times
Speaker 1: you even sends to death here. You strike me as
Speaker 1: easy to 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 order the new trial. The court found that
Speaker 1: prosecution was racially discriminatory in 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 prosecutor 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 age this time, the jury consisted
Speaker 1: of seven white and five black jurors.
Speaker 2: They gave me a little hope.
Speaker 1: Now, December fifth, two thousand and seven, a mistrial was
Speaker 1: declared as the jury could not reach a verdict and
Speaker 1: get ready for another shocker surprise ending seven white members
Speaker 1: of the jury voted to convict and the five black
Speaker 1: members voted to a quit. I don't even have the
Speaker 1: right words for that. So here comes trial number five
Speaker 1: September two thousand and eight. This time the jury was
Speaker 1: made up of nine white and three black members. The
Speaker 1: jury ended up in another mistrial, this time voting eleven
Speaker 1: to one to convict. The one dissenting person was a
Speaker 1: black person. And comes trial number six in summer of
Speaker 1: twenty ten, and this time the jury was composed of
Speaker 1: eleven white and one black member, and they found you
Speaker 1: guilty on all four counts of capital murder again on
Speaker 1: June eighteenth to twenty ten, and sentenced you to death again.
Speaker 1: And now we get to the post post post post post.
Speaker 1: It took me a long time just to say everything.
Speaker 1: You had to live its conviction litigation. So you were
Speaker 1: represented now by ker Weeble and Jerry Lynn Johnson from
Speaker 1: the Cornell Law School Death Penalty Clinic, and they appealed
Speaker 1: your conviction. In twenty fourteen, the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld
Speaker 1: the convictions and death sentences it The team sought review
Speaker 1: in the US Supreme Court, and in twenty sixteen, they
Speaker 1: ordered the Mississippi Supreme Court to review the possibly racially
Speaker 1: discriminatory jury selection. In November twenty seventeen, it was ruled
Speaker 1: I'm getting the chills again. It was ruled by a
Speaker 1: five to four vote that there was no discrimination. True,
Speaker 1: the most polite way I can think of to say,
Speaker 1: this is, what the fuck are they talking about? Well,
Speaker 1: I think I did say it that way. You would
Speaker 1: out for hear that, you know, sayd it really is.
Speaker 1: But your team appealed to the US Supreme Court again,
Speaker 1: and this is when American Public Media APM 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 twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: and it was a big hit, a big, big hit,
Speaker 1: big hit, and the things they uncovered are shocking. Fleming
Speaker 1: now said her testimonies and all of the trial were liies.
Speaker 1: She confessed that quote the whole this is her quote.
Speaker 1: The whole time I've been telling them, I don't remember
Speaker 1: the day. The whole time I've been telling them. I
Speaker 1: don't remember the day. I've been confused of the day
Speaker 1: from the beginning. I just didn't know how to say it.
Speaker 1: I was scared I was going to jail. Wow okay.
Speaker 1: Odell Hallman also recanting, saying that everything was all make
Speaker 1: believe on his part, and he also said that Evans
Speaker 1: dropped the drug charges penning against him and offered him
Speaker 1: other legal assistants. Roy Harris, who was the friend and
Speaker 1: driver of Clemmy Fleming, told the podcast that police had
Speaker 1: showed him a photo of you, and Harris said that
Speaker 1: the man he saw running away was not you exactly,
Speaker 1: and eventually he thought he was going to get arrested
Speaker 1: if he didn't say it was you, so he did.
Speaker 1: Edward McChristian also recanted his testimony that he was sitting
Speaker 1: on the porch at seven thirty eight am when you
Speaker 1: supposedly allegedly walked past his house from dear uncle Doyle
Speaker 1: Simpson's workplace, the garment factory, where the testimony had tied
Speaker 1: you to the alleged stolen gun. So all those lies
Speaker 1: are now unraveling. So in June twenty nineteen, the US
Speaker 1: Supreme Court reversed your convictions and death SeNSS by a
Speaker 1: vote of seven to two, seven to two. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: It ruled that the prosecution had engaged in racially discriminatory
Speaker 1: jury selection because they had struck forty one of the
Speaker 1: forty two black prospective jurors in the sixth trials combined.
Speaker 1: So Sherry Lynn Johnson had made the argument that led
Speaker 1: to the US Supreme Court decision to reverse. She argued
Speaker 1: that your case should be dismissed and not brought to
Speaker 1: a seventh trial. Should be obvious to anybody as you
Speaker 1: had already spent over twenty years now on death row,
Speaker 1: and that the evidence against you was basically advantished. It
Speaker 1: was non existent. It never had existed. But that is
Speaker 1: just proven that it had never existed. The Washington DC
Speaker 1: law firm of Hogan Lovel's, as well as the friend
Speaker 1: of the show, the director of the Mississippi Innocence Project,
Speaker 1: Tucker Carrington, the Mississippi Office of Post Conviction Council got involved,
Speaker 1: as well as attorney's Rob McDuff we know him, and
Speaker 1: Henderson Hill. They all began preparing for a possible retroal.
Speaker 1: Now you had the Dream Team training team Avengers. Yes,
Speaker 1: and on December sixteenth, twenty nineteen, you were finally released
Speaker 1: the home confinement to wait for your seventh trial. This
Speaker 1: had been almost twenty three years in prison, right right
Speaker 1: in twenty three. What do you remember about that day?
Speaker 2: I was nervous, you know, you know, I'd have been
Speaker 2: so close to home out of all the years and
Speaker 2: never made it, you know. And at that time, I
Speaker 2: was like, I don't see him giving me bail by
Speaker 2: letting me go home, you know, until they decide what
Speaker 2: they want to do, whether they want to have a
Speaker 2: seventh trial or not. But we got in the courtroom,
Speaker 2: you know, and Doug Gibson didn't even show up that day.
Speaker 2: He sent his assistant judge Lober talking, and he got
Speaker 2: started in about Doug the DA not showing up. You know,
Speaker 2: I would expect him to be here, you know. And
Speaker 2: and the more he talked, the better I felt. The
Speaker 2: more he talked about Doug. And then he said, you know,
Speaker 2: at this time, you know, I am going to grant Ball.
Speaker 1: Where'd you're going? Tex? Back to the plane on plane on
Speaker 1: to your sisters. Yes, what was your first meal when
Speaker 1: you got out? Oh? Man?
Speaker 2: So I had fried fish, catfish, hush puppet French fried
Speaker 2: cold saw and he was a funny thing too, because
Speaker 2: we were in the restroom, me and my brother in law.
Speaker 2: It has been like seven to eight other guys. So
Speaker 2: I'm standing at the urinal and you know, related myself.
Speaker 2: So I get through, I'm looking for the handle, and
Speaker 2: everybody was saying, just just walk away. I said, no,
Speaker 2: that's rude. You don't leak in a urinar and just
Speaker 2: walk away. I said, leat it on that start smelling,
Speaker 2: you know, everybody, hey, just walk away.
Speaker 1: I stepped back.
Speaker 2: He flushed itself and I had to walk back up
Speaker 2: to it and look at it, you know. And one
Speaker 2: of the guys in there, the white guy, he said,
Speaker 2: I don't know where you being, but you've been going
Speaker 2: for a long time. I said, yes, I have, and
Speaker 2: I'm washing my hand. And as my brother in law
Speaker 2: walked back through the restaurant drive my hands and everything,
Speaker 2: people were just stopping me. It's gonna be okay. And
Speaker 2: I guess they went back got and told their wives
Speaker 2: and everything about what happened in the bathroom, you know,
Speaker 2: and people were just telling me it's gonna be okay. Yes,
Speaker 2: I mean, it was funny and emotion at the same time.
Speaker 1: On December sixteenth, twenty nineteen, you were released to home
Speaker 1: confinement waiting for the seventh trial, like we talked about.
Speaker 1: And then in January twenty twenty, Evans stepped off the
Speaker 1: case and the Attorney General's office began reviewing it. So
Speaker 1: and sure enough, on September fourth, twenty twenty, Mississippi Attorney
Speaker 1: General Lynn Fitch announced that the charges were going to
Speaker 1: be dismissed, and you stated, I'm now I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote you, even though you're sitting right here in front
Speaker 1: of me. Today, I am finally free from the injustice
Speaker 1: that left me locked in a box for twenty three years.
Speaker 2: I felt like doing flips, and you know, big guy
Speaker 2: like me shouldn't be doing flips. But it happened, as
Speaker 2: I can't even describe here. George Loeper say, you know
Speaker 2: I dismissed this case with prejudice. Yes, and you know,
Speaker 2: and at the time the words didn't even wring on me.
Speaker 2: And someone told me, he said, when he said with prejudice,
Speaker 2: that means that they can never try you again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's beautiful, And it's funny because prejudice is usually
Speaker 1: a bad word. Only instance I could think of when
Speaker 1: it's a good word. Yes. So in the meantime, it's
Speaker 1: great to see you out here living your best life married,
Speaker 1: you know, traveling. What can our listeners do to show support.
Speaker 2: I do have a gofund me out there, so.
Speaker 1: Yes, we'll have it linked in the bio. So now,
Speaker 1: mister Flowers, we have a segment of our show that
Speaker 1: I love the most, which is called Closing Arguments. It
Speaker 1: works like this. First of all, I again thank you
Speaker 1: for just being you and being here in the studio
Speaker 1: with me. And then I turned my microphone off, kick
Speaker 1: back in my chair and sometimes I close my eyes
Speaker 1: and just listen to anything else you have to say.
Speaker 1: It's called closing arguments, and you have the mic and
Speaker 1: you can just talk about anything you think you want
Speaker 1: to share.
Speaker 2: Well, I would first like to thank you all for
Speaker 2: having me, and I think you also got all right.
Speaker 2: I really do and look forward to hanging out with you.
Speaker 2: So all the listeners are I asked that we strive
Speaker 2: for change, you know, and make this a better place.
Speaker 2: I think we all should get along and love one
Speaker 2: another and not hate for no reason at all. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm a laid back guy. I'm easy to get it along.
Speaker 2: With I would like to send shout out to all
Speaker 2: the victim's family and I hope one day soon that
Speaker 2: they find the real guy.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flahm.
Speaker 1: Please support your local innocence projects and go to the
Speaker 1: link in our bio to see how you can help.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff
Speaker 1: Clyburn and Kevin Warnis. The music on the show, as always,
Speaker 1: is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
Speaker 1: sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason
Speaker 1: Flahm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number one