Now that charges against Curtis flowers have been officially dismissed, In the Dark released a final episode that is an interview with Curtis. I recommend it highly. I have written about it in my review of the podcast, and did a blog post on the prejudice of the jurors. But I wanted to revisit a few threads in the case.
Curtis Flowers: The Perfect Innocent Man
At the time of his arrest, Curtis Flowers had no criminal record. He had no history of violent behavior or drug use. There was nothing in his past to lead one to think he could commit a quadruple homicide. His brief time working at Tardy Furniture did not end violently.
Curtis Flowers does not suffer from a mental illness. He is not neuro divergent. He has at least average intelligence. When charged with the crime, he was young, early twenties, but was not a child. He had a fully formed adult brain that knew if he gave in and made a confession just to get out of there or to please the cops it would have long term consequences.
The family of Curtis Flowers stood by him. His mother said in the podcast they had spent she believed more than $100,000 in his legal defense, and they were not wealthy. His mother insisted he call every day, despite how expensive it is to receive calls from prison. Beside paying for a legal defense, they provided emotional support and encouraged him to never give up and believed one day he would be out of prison.
Because of his family’s support, Curtis Flowers had access to legal representation. The innocence project took up his case further down the road, but his lawyers were able to get his convictions overturned on appeal which is what lead to the six trials and kept the case going long enough for In the Dark to make a difference when they started investigating.
The only marginalized group Curtis Flowers belongs to is his race. He is a cisgender heterosexual male, who is Christian. I am not trying to trivialize the role of racism in the case, but if he was gay or transgender or pagan in addition to being black, the deck would be further stacked against him. It would also increase the chance he would be estranged from his family (which is very common to members of those groups) and might not have had the support he needed to keep fighting for 20 years.
I suspect there are people who have been wrongfully convicted but because all of the above isn’t true there isn’t very much attention paid to the case.
Doug Evans: The Power of a DA
While he only speaks in the podcast twice, and both times is openly hostile to the reporters, Doug Evans is the other key figure in the story. I personally think he believes Curtis Flowers is guilty—he wouldn’t have gone to the lengths he did if he did not. But we have a construction of a cop as being rough around the edges or bending the law when his unfailing intuition tells him who is guilty, that it will be all right in the end. I do intend to write a post about the difference between intuition and prejudice, but the always right investigator is a trope within our society that has immense power.
A question that bugs me: how much does the DA in small town Mississippi get paid? Doug Evans ran for DA unopposed several times. I hope being a DA requires a law degree, and doubt there are many law schools in that area of Mississippi. If a person of color or someone who was progressive who grew up in that town left to go to law school I doubt there would be any incentive for them to return to run for election of District Attorney. They could probably make more money practicing law in a larger city, and would be fully aware of what they would face trying to get elected. Although becoming a practicing lawyer would be different than working for the state. This point does get into the larger issue of access to professionals in rural areas, not just legal representation or fairness from the local authorities.
How big of a pool is it of people who want to be the DA of a rural county? If there are multiple unopposed elections, probably not many. If there is no influx of people wanting to join law enforcement or the district attorney’s office in a small town then it becomes insular, which allows an office to pursue a suspect they believe is guilty even when the evidence is flimsy. Many other countries have a system where District Attorneys are appointed, and that is a change I know would be fought tooth and nail. But I can’t help but wonder if we did have a system that allowed people to be moved around and had another power that could intervene, if it would mean another set of eyes would look at a case like this before trying someone six times. I am aware that system might have other problems I am not familiar with, but in the days talking of police reform it might be something that should be given more attention.