Curtis Flowers | 60 Minutes Archive
In a Nutshell
Curtis Flowers was tried six times by Mississippi DA Doug Evans for a 1996 quadruple murder despite no physical evidence linking him to the crime; all convictions were overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct, including systematic exclusion of Black jurors and witness manipulation. An "In the Dark" podcast investigation exposed key witnesses recanting their testimony, including one who fabricated a jailhouse confession to cut deals with prosecutors, and revealed Evans' pattern of racially discriminatory jury selection. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the final conviction in 2019, leading to Flowers' release after 23 years on death row and the dismissal of all charges.
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60 Minutes covered the case against Curtis Flowers, a black man from Mississippi who was tried six times for the same crime by the same prosecutor. Flowers might still be on death row if not for the work of reporters from an investigative podcast. The story involves Flowers, the reporters who helped free him, and the prosecutor who pursued him for more than two decades.
The case began in Winona, Mississippi on a July morning in 1996. Shortly after Tardy Furniture opened for the day, the store's owner, bookkeeper, delivery man, and a 16-year-old were shot in the head execution style. No one saw it happen.
When Curtis Flowers heard about the crime and the way the victims were murdered, his reaction was that his heart dropped. The first thing he felt was sorry for them, then he thought he could have been there. Flowers had worked at Tardy that summer for 3 days delivering and fixing furniture, but he was let go after he stopped showing up.
Almost immediately after the murders, some victim's families suspected Flowers. The police questioned him, but made no arrest. Months passed. Flowers moved to Texas to live with his sister.
There was a knock at the door. Flowers answered it and was handcuffed against the wall. The officer explained there was a warrant for his arrest back in Mississippi. When Flowers asked "For what?" the officer said "Four counts of capital murder." Flowers responded "Me? Are you sure you got the right guy?"
Flowers had no criminal record and was more likely to be on stage with a gospel group than in handcuffs. There was no murder weapon, no DNA or fingerprints linking him to the crime. An all-white jury deliberated for just an hour to convict him.
At age 27, Curtis Flowers was sentenced to death and put in the Mississippi State Penitentiary known as Parchman Prison. When asked if he was scared, he said yes. When describing Parchman, he called it "the worst thing you ever dreamed about. Like a nightmare because you hear all kinds of noise at night. Inmates who have just snapped, some who have lost it. They act up all night."
While on death row, other death row inmates were being executed. Flowers said this was nerve-wracking itself. His conviction was appealed and overturned, but there would be five more trials for the same crime by the same prosecutor.
Attorney Rob McDuff of the Mississippi Center for Justice joined Curtis Flowers' legal team in 2019. In the first three trials, Flowers was found guilty, but each conviction was overturned for prosecutorial misconduct.
When discussing prosecutorial misconduct, McDuff explained these convictions were reversed because of the prosecutor's misrepresentation of the evidence to the jury and because of his discrimination in the selection of the jury. The same prosecutor went after Curtis Flowers again and again. McDuff noted there is nothing in the system that stops that from happening, and described the prosecutor as being "like Captain Ahab hunting the whale."
The prosecutor was District Attorney Doug Evans, who even after hung juries in trials four and five, kept going. In 2010, Evans finally got a conviction to stick in trial six. Flowers returned to death row.
An email changed Flowers' fortunes. Maline Baron is the lead reporter for American Public Media's podcast, In the Dark. Samara Freark is the podcast managing producer. Baron received an email from a woman telling her about Curtis Flowers.
Right away, the team questioned if it was possible someone would be tried six times. To investigate how that happened, the In the Dark team descended on Winona, a town of 5,000. Most of downtown, like Tardy Furniture, had faded away. The podcast reporters planned to stay a few months but stayed a year, knocking on doors and interviewing hundreds of people.
When asked if there was anything that anybody said early on that made them think Flowers was the guy who did this, Baron said they had to assume that somebody who's been convicted four times has a chance of being guilty, but the more they looked into the evidence, there wasn't a single piece of evidence that actually held up.
The first piece of evidence to crumble was the winding route Doug Evans told jurors that Curtis Flowers walked that July morning. According to the prosecution, Curtis woke up that morning angry, no longer worked at the furniture store, wanted to kill the people there, but didn't have a gun. So he walked across town, stole a gun from a car, walked home still angry, left his house, walked with a gun to the furniture store, shot four people in the head, and walked home.
It seemed far-fetched that Flowers would brazenly walk so far in broad daylight. When the podcast reporters started talking to route witnesses who claimed they saw Flowers, a pattern emerged. It was clear that they did not pick up the phone and call the police to say they saw something suspicious. They were sought out months later in a lot of cases. It turned out that they felt like they needed to tell law enforcement this happened. One guy said they already told him that they knew he saw Curtis.
Clemmy Fleming was the most important route witness. She testified that Curtis Flowers was running away from the furniture store shortly after the murders. This was incredibly damning testimony, and she testified to it six times.
The podcast learned that Clem was not telling the truth. Clemmy Fleming admitted she didn't remember when she saw Flowers running. In November, the podcast spoke to her in Winona where she still lives. When asked about seeing Curtis running through town, she said yes, but admitted she wasn't sure what day it was. When asked if she ever told the prosecutors she wasn't sure about the day she saw him, she said they didn't want to hear that. They just wanted her to tell what she seen, not worry about what day she seen.
Another key witness also recanted to In the Dark. Odell Cookie Halman, a career criminal, had testified that Curtis Flowers confessed to him in prison. Producer Samara Freark tracked down Halman in Parchman Prison. She talked to him on an illicit cell phone. He would set up a blanket fort to talk so the guards wouldn't be able to see him. He would hang blankets up over his bunk and hide in there.
Eventually, Halman admitted to Freark that he made the story up about Curtis confessing. On the phone from prison, Halman said "For him telling me he killed some people. Hell no. He ain't never told me that. That was a lie."
The podcast reported that after Halman came forward with a phony confession, he cut generous deals with prosecutors for years and avoided punishment for multiple felony charges. While he was free in 2016, he murdered three people and was finally sentenced to life in prison.
The revelations turned In the Dark into a sensation. The podcast was downloaded 42 million times, but Curtis Flowers could not listen to it. He was on death row in Parchman Prison reading transcripts of the podcast. When reading about these witnesses finally recanting their stories, his first reaction was "It's about time." He was just ready to go home.
As Flowers waited on death row, the podcast team continued unraveling his case by scouring closed jails and abandoned factories for clues and documents. They had to search them out like they were on a treasure hunt. They found mounds in the corner that were public records for the county, covered in mouse droppings and mold.
The team also analyzed decades of court data that revealed prosecutor Doug Evans had a history of excluding black people from juries at a disproportionate rate. Across all of Curtis Flowers' trials, 61 of the 72 jurors were white. All 61 voted to convict. Those numbers reverberated far beyond Mississippi.
In 2019, the US Supreme Court ruled that Evans and the state of Mississippi had violated Curtis Flowers' constitutional rights and overturned his conviction. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that there was a relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals.
Six months later, Curtis Flowers was released on bail. He walked out of jail with a monitor on his ankle and his sisters on his arms. When asked how he was feeling, he said he felt good and was happy to be out. For the first time in 23 years, he was out. In September, the ankle monitor came off.
The Mississippi Attorney General's office dismissed all charges against Curtis Flowers, writing that it is in the interest of justice that the state will not seek an unprecedented seventh trial of Mr. Flowers.
In November, Doug Evans sat down for a rare interview. When asked why he prosecuted Flowers again and again, Evans said because he knew he was guilty and the families knew he was guilty and the families deserve justice.
When asked about witnesses changing their stories, Evans said he didn't think any of them had changed their stories. When asked if Curtis could get a fair trial when the jury is predominantly white, Evans said yes, and that race has nothing to do with what they do. He claimed a lot of times race gets thrown in as an excuse if there's no defense.
When confronted with Justice Kavanaugh's statement about the relentless effort to rid the jury of black individuals, Evans said he couldn't understand that and that Kavanaugh was accusing him like he was accused before he was put on the Supreme Court.
Evans said he never listened to the podcast, but is convinced In the Dark set out to discredit his case. He claimed the way the case was being presented was that it was a weak case with no fingerprints, no DNA, no witness that put him at the crime scene, only witnesses that saw him on the street. He said there was a witness that sees him walk in the front door, which is about as close as you can get.
However, over six trials, no witness ever testified to seeing Curtis Flowers walk in the front door at Tardy Furniture. Evans then made another startling claim, saying there were people that saw him burning clothes after that, but they weren't able to introduce that either. He claimed they saw him burning clothes and a pair of tennis shoes outside his house.
But in 12,000 pages of pre-trial hearings and trial proceedings that were reviewed, no mention of that story could be found. Rob McDuff, Curtis Flowers' lawyer, said that's because it never happened. McDuff called it preposterous that Doug Evans continues to say these things, noting he's been called out on his deceptions and misconduct time and time again. McDuff believes every case Doug Evans ever handled should be looked into.
Curtis Flowers is now 50 years old. He spent nearly half his life in prison. During a visit to see his family in Winona in November, he told about the adjustment being slow. He's so used to being in shackles, making little baby steps. When he was turned loose and able to step like he wanted to, it takes a lot of wind because he had to adjust to it since he was always in shackles.
But somehow after 23 years, the former gospel singer never lost his voice, singing "Let me come home. Home. Let me come home."
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