If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try and Try Again

You might find it strange that someone could be on trial for the same crime six different times, but unfortunately, a black man named Curtis Flowers is very familiar with this situation. A podcast explains this case in detail, but, in a nutshell, Curtis Flowers was accused of murdering four employees at a furniture store and therefore put on trial. However, the jury at the trial lacked diversity, to say the very least, consisting of mostly white jurors. The white jurors quickly decided their verdict despite the obvious lack of evidence, and Curtis Flowers was decidedly said to be guilty of murder.

But how did this jury come to be? Well, the prosecutor, Doug Evans, has a major role in this. As prosecutor, Evans is given a limited amount of “strikes” which he can use to exclude individuals from the jury as long as is able to give a reason not solely based on race. In the trial of Curtis Flowers, Evans used all of his strikes on black people and ended up with mostly white people to place in the jury. When asked to give reasons for his strikes, he provided false excuses and stories such as: they slept during the process (even though no one else reported the same thing) or answered inappropriately to a question (that they were never asked). Because of this, Flowers was allowed to have another trial, but nevertheless, the same thing happened repeatedly. Though people questioned the prosecutor, Doug Evans was able to keep his position in each of the six trials. This ongoing case demonstrates an undeniable problem in the criminal justice system. Authorities like Doug Evans abuse their power in court while many individuals blindly trust that they are being fair. It goes to show that discrimination can wrongly lead to the deaths of black individuals, even today, and it’s clear that something at the core of our justice system needs to change.

All I ever wanted was for him to get a fair trial. Get a fair trial, and then I can accept whatever happened. But I can’t accept not being given a fair trial.

Ray Charles Carter (Curtis Flower’s attorney)