The podcast “In the Dark” has sparked a petition demanding the recall of 5th Circuit Court District Attorney Doug Evans of Grenada.
Care 2, an online media site that supports petitions started by members of the public, showed today that 35,082 of a requested 40,000 had signed the petition as of last weekend.
The petition is in response to an investigation by American Public Media Reports that showed Evans, in his over two decades as district attorney, and his office have struck black potential jurors at a rate 4½ times higher than white potential jurors.
The data collected by APM looked at jury information for 225 of 418 criminal trials conducted between 1992 and 2017 in Evans’ district and found that prosecutors struck half of potential black jurors compared to 11 percent of white potential jurors.
In the case of Curtis Giovanni Flowers of Winona, who is facing execution after being convicted of the 1996 murders of four people at Tardy Furniture Store in Winona, 72 total jurors deliberated over the six trials he faced. Sixty-one of them were white, and all voted to convict him. Eleven were black, with five voting to convict and six voting to acquit. Flowers is black.
The story of that crime, Flowers’ arrest and his journey through Mississippi courts is the subject of “In the Dark,” Season 2, which has had more than 2 million listeners since it first came out a few months ago.
Last week, Evans, who is white, told the Commonwealth he doesn’t believe the weight of white jurors compared to black jurors has had any impact on the Flowers case or any other case he has tried.
He dismissed the charge of unequal representation on juries, saying, “I don’t know where that figure comes from. I’ve had many trials where no black jurors were struck.
“I think these folks are just coming up with anything they can to discredit the (Flowers) case.”
Evans told the Commonwealth he has not listened to the podcast and is not aware of how reporters came up with the data. Their research methods are explained in detail in Episodes 7 and 8 of the podcast.
Flowers is currently on death row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman and is exercising post-conviction appeals following his conviction and sentencing in the sixth trial, held in Winona in 2010.
The first three trials ended in convictions as well, but they were overturned on appeal in which questions were raised about Evans’ dismissal of potential black jurors. The fourth and fifth trials resulted in hung juries.
Care 2 offers a place online for members of the general public to start petitions around a range of issues from animal rights to human and civil rights. The petitions are designed to raise public awareness by placing chosen causes before the public on social media in hopes that broader media attention will be sparked.
The “In the Dark” podcast has enjoyed widespread media attention over the last few weeks, especially on National Public Radio where, this morning, the podcast’s lead reporter, Madeleine Baran, was interviewed about the Flowers case and the episode concerning Evans.
A ninth episode released today asks why Flowers was singled out by law enforcement and prosecutors as the main suspect in the case.
• Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
