The Curtis Flowers Case

In July 1996, four people were shot and killed at the Tardy Furniture store in Winona, Mississippi. Curtis Flowers, a Black man who had previously worked at the store, was charged with the murders. He was tried six times by the same prosecutor, District Attorney Doug Evans, over the next two decades — a constitutional record. Three trials ended in hung juries; three convictions were overturned on appeal by the Mississippi Supreme Court for prosecutorial misconduct.

APM Reports journalist Madeleine Baran and the In the Dark team spent two years investigating the case, publishing their findings in Season 2 (2018). Their statistical analysis documented that Evans struck Black potential jurors from the jury pool at 4.4 times the rate of white jurors across his entire career. The team submitted this analysis in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court.

In June 2019, the United States Supreme Court ruled 7–2 in Flowers v. Mississippi that Evans had violated the Equal Protection Clause through discriminatory jury selection in the sixth trial. Curtis Flowers' conviction was vacated. In September 2020, the Mississippi Attorney General's office dropped all charges against Flowers. He was released after 23 years in prison.