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In the Dark

Factual: Crime & Justice: True Crime

How can one man be tried six times for the same crime?

Curtis Flowers has been tried six times for the same crime. For more than 22 years, he’s maintained his innocence, winning appeal after appeal. But every time Flowers’ conviction has been reversed, the prosecutor tried the case again. Reporters from American Public Media spent two years investigating the Flowers case to find out what the evidence really shows, and why the same prosecutor has tried the case again and again.

In the Dark: Episode six

Factual: Crime & Justice

31/08/2019 GMT

Episode six

BBC World Service - In the Dark, Episode six

Why were the juries in Curtis Flowers’ trials so white?

Four of Curtis Flowers’ convictions have been overturned because the prosecutor violated legal procedure. And yet the same prosecutor has continued to try the case.

There's one critical aspect of the Curtis Flowers case that we haven't examined yet — the makeup of the juries. Each of the four times Flowers was convicted, the jury was all white or nearly all white. These trials were held in a state with a population that’s almost 40 percent black. So we decided to look more closely at why so few black prospective jurors had been selected and why the juries were so disproportionately white. And we found that it wasn't always happenstance.

Hosted and narrated by Madeleine Baran
Produced by Samara Freemark, APM
Editor: Jasper Corbett
 
Originally broadcast on APM.

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