Jump to content

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

retrofade

After 6 Murder Trials and Nearly 24 Years, Charges Dropped Against Curtis Flowers

Recommended Posts

Quote

Six times, prosecutors took Curtis Flowers, a Black Mississippi resident, to trial on the same murder case before mostly-white juries. And six times, the trials ended with convictions that were later reversed or with mistrials. But on Friday, two decades after prosecutors began pursuing murder charges against Mr. Flowers, they announced that they were dropping the case.

In a memo seeking dismissal of the charges, prosecutors from the Mississippi attorney general’s office wrote that “it is in the interest of justice that the State will not seek an unprecedented seventh trial of Mr. Flowers.”

Mr. Flowers, who is 50, said in a statement issued by his lawyers that he had never given up on the idea that the case could one day be over.

“Today, I am finally free from the injustice that left me locked in a box for 23 years,” said Mr. Flowers, who was released from custody on bail late last year.

Mr. Flowers had been accused in the 1996 killings of four people in a furniture store in Winona, a small city in Mississippi. Among those killed were the 59-year-old store owner and a 16-year-old boy whose part-time job at the store was his first.

The six trials of Mr. Flowers, who had worked at the furniture store, took place over more than two decades. The trials drew attention to the way that Black jurors had largely been excluded by a white prosecutor who oversaw all of the trials. Through Mr. Flowers’s trials, 61 of the 72 jurors were white.

In the most recent trial, Mr. Flowers was convicted and sentenced to death, but his lawyers appealed the conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled last year that the prosecutor, Doug Evans had unconstitutionally kept Black people from serving on the jury.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/us/after-6-murder-trials-and-nearly-24-years-charges-dropped-against-curtis-flowers.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Excited New Year GIF

Racism doesn't exist on America.  It's an excuse for not succeeding !

It's hard to succeed when the Guv locks you down simply to pit down the coloreds and for a prosecutor to chalk up a 'W'.

"We don't have evidence but, we have lot's of theories."

Americans Mayor

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Through Mr. Flowers’s trials, 61 of the 72 jurors were white".

"As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 10,925 people living in the county. ... The racial makeup of the county was 54.25% White, 44.95% Black or African American, 0.08% Native American, 0.25% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 0.07% from other races, and 0.37% from two or more races".

I'm pretty lazy, @TheSanDiegan should run the statistics to see what the chances of this occurring naturally are.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Los_Aztecas said:

"Through Mr. Flowers’s trials, 61 of the 72 jurors were white".

"As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 10,925 people living in the county. ... The racial makeup of the county was 54.25% White, 44.95% Black or African American, 0.08% Native American, 0.25% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 0.07% from other races, and 0.37% from two or more races".

I'm pretty lazy, @TheSanDiegan should run the statistics to see what the chances of this occurring naturally are.

The probability of this randomly occurring is fairly small. However there is nothing random about juror selection. 

I'll give it a stab, but it will be an oversimplified representation of the problem.

If jury selection is random and we were to look at a single jury, then there are approx. 6 duodecillion - that's 6 followed by 39 zeroes (I had to look up the term) - ways to choose 12 jurors from the population of 10,925. I used an online combinations calculator to arrive at the figure:

5,999,234,071,769,849,346,034,674,044,858,823,692,225

For simplicity's sake (it's a f*cking Saturday after all), let's round up to 6x10^39.

Next, given the supplied numbers, there are approx. 1.46X10^31 ways of choosing 10 white people out of a population of 5927.

Thus, at its simplest level the probability of randomly choosing 10 white jurors out of 12 from a population of 10,925 that s 54.25% white is approx. 1.46X10^31/6.00X10^39 ≈ .00000024%. 

Now, I'm probably waaaaaay off here, as I'm oversimplifying the shit out of the problem and have a shitton of stuff to do today while it's still a reasonable 101 outside - maybe we can get @Nevada Convert to check my work?

For instance, what are the race demographics of jury participation (as a function of population)? What about race demographics normalized for that region/state/county? Is there a sense of provincialism that impacts jury duty participation rates (i.e., are some race or ethnic groups more likely to try to participate in jury duty in that part of Mississippi)? I am guessing there is a correlation between income and jury duty participation rates, but tbh I don't know if this is an issue, or how big of an issue it might be.

St-Javelin-Sm.jpgChase.jpg 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, TheSanDiegan said:

The probability of this randomly occurring is fairly small. However there is nothing random about juror selection. Of course, I just wanted to illuminate that fact. 

I'll give it a stab, but it will be an oversimplified representation of the problem.

If jury selection is random and we were to look at a single jury, then there are approx. 6 duodecillion - that's 6 followed by 39 zeroes (I had to look up the term) - ways to choose 12 jurors from the population of 10,925. I used an online combinations calculator to arrive at the figure:

5,999,234,071,769,849,346,034,674,044,858,823,692,225

For simplicity's sake (it's a f*cking Saturday after all), let's round up to 6x10^39.

Next, given the supplied numbers, there are approx. 1.46X10^31 ways of choosing 10 white people out of a population of 5927.

Thus, at its simplest level the probability of randomly choosing 10 white jurors out of 12 from a population of 10,925 that s 54.25% white is approx. 1.46X10^31/6.00X10^39 ≈ .00000024%. Smaller than I thought.

Now, I'm probably waaaaaay off here, as I'm oversimplifying the shit out of the problem and have a shitton of stuff to do today while it's still a reasonable 101 outside - maybe we can get @Nevada Convert to check my work?

For instance, what are the race demographics of jury participation (as a function of population)? What about race demographics normalized for that region/state/county? Is there a sense of provincialism that impacts jury duty participation rates (i.e., are some race or ethnic groups more likely to try to participate in jury duty in that part of Mississippi)? I am guessing there is a correlation between income and jury duty participation rates, but tbh I don't know if this is an issue, or how big of an issue it might be.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/4/2020 at 10:29 PM, retrofade said:

He should’ve changed his last name to Magnolia 24 years ago, and maybe it would’ve at least appeased the racists enough so he didn’t have to do prison time. Why Magnolia? If anyone can figure it out, they’ll win a cookie. 

kat.jpg

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, TheSanDiegan said:

The probability of this randomly occurring is fairly small. However there is nothing random about juror selection. 

I'll give it a stab, but it will be an oversimplified representation of the problem.

If jury selection is random and we were to look at a single jury, then there are approx. 6 duodecillion - that's 6 followed by 39 zeroes (I had to look up the term) - ways to choose 12 jurors from the population of 10,925. I used an online combinations calculator to arrive at the figure:

5,999,234,071,769,849,346,034,674,044,858,823,692,225

For simplicity's sake (it's a f*cking Saturday after all), let's round up to 6x10^39.

Next, given the supplied numbers, there are approx. 1.46X10^31 ways of choosing 10 white people out of a population of 5927.

Thus, at its simplest level the probability of randomly choosing 10 white jurors out of 12 from a population of 10,925 that s 54.25% white is approx. 1.46X10^31/6.00X10^39 ≈ .00000024%. 

Now, I'm probably waaaaaay off here, as I'm oversimplifying the shit out of the problem and have a shitton of stuff to do today while it's still a reasonable 101 outside - maybe we can get @Nevada Convert to check my work?

For instance, what are the race demographics of jury participation (as a function of population)? What about race demographics normalized for that region/state/county? Is there a sense of provincialism that impacts jury duty participation rates (i.e., are some race or ethnic groups more likely to try to participate in jury duty in that part of Mississippi)? I am guessing there is a correlation between income and jury duty participation rates, but tbh I don't know if this is an issue, or how big of an issue it might be.

Why waste your time on that? It was obviously racism, we don’t need Mr. Math to prove it for us. 

kat.jpg

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Nevada Convert said:

Hey, I just thought of a great money making venture for you. Find all the manufacturers that make punching bags, and license them your moniker pic to be reproduced onto the cover of their punching bags. Everyone will want to punch that. Hell, I’d buy one. 

Lol.

That is hilarious coming from the biggest punching bag in the history of the MWC board.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Nevada Convert said:

Hey, I just thought of a great money making venture for you. Find all the manufacturers that make punching bags, and license them your moniker pic to be reproduced onto the cover of their punching bags. Everyone will want to punch that. Hell, I’d buy one. 

This is definitely the douchiest pic I could find in the 2 minutes I looked! :thumbsup:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So four people were shot to death in a store he was fired from two weeks prior. Eyewitnesses saw him there that morning. Bloody shoe-print in his size of shoe (10.5 Fila Grant Hill 2) and one that he owns found at the scene. Gun reported stolen from his uncle’s car (the same day) matches caliber used in shooting. Gunshot residue found on his hand.

This dude most-likely murdered four people (including a 16-year-old) and got away with it (if serving 20+ years counts as that) due to prosecutorial misconduct and racism. Shitty situation all-around.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, bsu_alum9 said:

So four people were shot to death in a store he was fired from two weeks prior. Eyewitnesses saw him there that morning. Bloody shoe-print in his size of shoe (10.5 Fila Grant Hill 2) and one that he owns found at the scene. Gun reported stolen from his uncle’s car (the same day) matches caliber used in shooting. Gunshot residue found on his hand.

This dude most-likely murdered four people (including a 16-year-old) and got away with it (if serving 20+ years counts as that) due to prosecutorial misconduct and racism. Shitty situation all-around.

Oh he is guilty most likely.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, Nevada Convert said:

He should’ve changed his last name to Magnolia 24 years ago, and maybe it would’ve at least appeased the racists enough so he didn’t have to do prison time. Why Magnolia? If anyone can figure it out, they’ll win a cookie. 

No cookies awarded. A Magnolia is the state flower for Mississippi, and it’s a white Magnolia, of course. 

kat.jpg

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/4/2020 at 10:29 PM, retrofade said:

Jesus H. Christ. That’s what you get when you rely on you and The NY Times to give us fair, honest and accurate information. I looked into it and the dude is guilty as fvck. The racists didn’t need to be racist to convict him, but they couldn’t help themselves, so the dirt bag gets away with murder because the racists screwed up the process. Losers all around the place and no justice for the victims. Lefty’s like yourself hear about racism in the process, so that automatically means he’s not guilty, or you think he doesn’t deserve to be held accountable because there were racists everywhere in MS. Either way, that’s pathetic.

kat.jpg

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Nevada Convert said:

Jesus H. Christ. That’s what you get when you rely on you and The NY Times to give us fair, honest and accurate information. I looked into it and the dude is guilty as fvck. The racists didn’t need to be racist to convict him, but they couldn’t help themselves, so the dirt bag gets away with murder because the racists screwed up the process. Losers all around the place and no justice for the victims. Lefty’s like yourself hear about racism in the process, so that automatically means he’s not guilty, or you think he doesn’t deserve to be held accountable because there were racists everywhere in MS. Either way, that’s pathetic.

Where did I say anything about his guilt or innocence? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Nevada Convert said:

Jesus H. Christ. That’s what you get when you rely on you and The NY Times to give us fair, honest and accurate information. I looked into it and the dude is guilty as fvck. The racists didn’t need to be racist to convict him, but they couldn’t help themselves, so the dirt bag gets away with murder because the racists screwed up the process. Losers all around the place and no justice for the victims. Lefty’s like yourself hear about racism in the process, so that automatically means he’s not guilty, or you think he doesn’t deserve to be held accountable because there were racists everywhere in MS. Either way, that’s pathetic.

If your willing to taint the process to get a desired verdict, It leads many to believe there is also bias in your indictment.

"We don't have evidence but, we have lot's of theories."

Americans Mayor

Link to comment
Share on other sites



  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



×
×
  • Create New...