By Alan Bean
The state’s key witness in the six (6) trials of Curtis Flowers will be spending the next three years in federal prison.
When the trial of Patricia Hallmon Sullivan was first reported in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, her link to the Flowers case wasn’t mentioned. Fortunately Jimmie E. Gates eventually connected the dots.
By coincidence, Patricia Hallmon Sullivan was represented by Mike Horan of Grenada, a former assistant to Doug Evans, the lead prosecutor in the Flowers case. According to the Clarion-Ledger article (see below) Horan told Barbour that Sullivan’s testimony led to Flowers’ convictions.
So it did. Take Patricia Hallmon and her darling brother, Odell, out of the mix and the state’s case against Flowers fall apart.
Odell initially testified that Curtis confessed to him that he had murdered four people at the Tardy Furniture store in Winona, MS in 1996.
When the trial was over, a contrite Odell Hallmon wrote letters to Lola Flowers (Curtis’ mother) and one of Flowers’ attorneys, confessing that he and his sister Patricia had cooked up their testimony in hopes of getting $30,000 . . . then the going rate for perjury.
Unfortunately, Odell was eventually released from prison and, being unable to care for himself, he moved in with his mother and sister Patricia.
Odell has testified that his sister was enraged with him for turning against his own family, and kept on him about it until he picked up the phone and called DA Doug Evans. He has been backing Patricia’s story ever since.
Patricia and Odell are exceptionally weak people who were seduced into perjury by the State of Mississippi represented by Doug Evans and John Johnson, Evans’ investigator.
Now that Patricia has once again yielded to temptation, will Mr. Evans continue to sponsor her testimony?
Moreover, will Mr. Horan use his considerable influence on behalf of Curtis Flowers? Having helped to convict an innocent man, will the Grenada attorney work to make it right?
Finally, why is Federal Judge William Barbour so convinced that bearing false witness to (or on behalf of) the state is inconsistent with Patricia Hallmon’s character. This wasn’t a single slip; she was convicted on 8 of the 14 counts she faced. This suggests a pattern of behavior strong enough to define the defendant’s character. Patricia Hallmon Sullivan is a liar. She pled not guilty and forced the feds to take her to trial. Now she is ‘fessing up. That makes her a perjurer.
Why do we find it hard to believe that a woman who, by her own admission, committed perjury in September, 2010 was telling the truth three months earlier when she testified (in truly bizarre fashion) at the sixth trial of Curtis Flowers? Patricia Hallmon is a weak person with chronic money problems who does whatever it takes to bring home the bacon. If she has a conscience it is rarely on display.
Contrast that with Curtis Flowers who, at the time of arrest, had never been charged with a crime, and who in fourteen years of incarceration has not had a single disciplinary write-up.
I don’t know very much about Judge William Barbour. Like governor Haley Barbour, Judge William hails from Yazoo City and both men have worked in association with the Yazoo City law firm, Henry, Barbour, DeCell and Bridgforth, the oldest law firm in the state of Mississippi.
State Senator Herman DeCell, another firm alumnus, was appointed to the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission by Governor Ross Barnett in 1960.
A Sovereignty Commission document from 1958 explains why Yazoo City (like Winona, MS) didn’t have much of a “Negro problem”.
The Executive Committee meets for lunch each Friday noon at a luncheon at Dandries Restaurant. At these meetings, they take up anything pertinent to racial relations that has happened during the last week and decide what action should be taken. If the complaint is with reference to some Negro agitator, a committee will go to the Negro’s boss and discuss the situation with him. Usually the boss will fire the Negro. That will end the matter without the Citizens’ Council being outwardly involved.
There is no reason to believe that Judge Barbour is particularly proud of his historical association with this kind of behavior, but I doubt he loses much sleep over it either. Judge Barbour went to work for the Yazoo City law firm in 1963 while, one assumes, Senator DeCell was still working with the Sovereignty Commission. Like Haley Barbour, Doug Evans and any white Mississippian old enough to have been alive in the early 1960s, the legacy of Jim Crow prejudice is hard to shake.
Judge Barbour was appointed to the federal bench in 1983 by Ronald Reagan and will soon be leaving the bench.
Tax preparer going to jail
Woman was key witness in murder trials
Jimmie E. Gates (jgates@clarionledger.com)
January 6, 2011
A Jackson tax preparer who was a key prosecution witness in the long running capital murder case of Curtis Giovanni Flowers in Montgomery County is headed to prison herself.
Patricia Ann Sullivan, aka Patricia Hallmon Sullivan, aka Patricia Odom, 46, was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Jackson to three years in federal prison for aiding and abetting in the filing of false tax returns for customers.
Sullivan was convicted Sept. 30 on eight of 14 counts she faced.
“I don’t know why you did it,” U.S. District Judge William Barbour Jr. told Sullivan at the end of her sentencing hearing. “It doesn’t seem to be in your character. You did it, however.”
In addition to the government, the victims are the taxpayers, who didn’t know Sullivan was submitting false information on their returns, the judge said.
Barbour said the taxpayers are having to pay back refunds they weren’t entitled to receive.
Several witnesses testified during Sullivan’s trial in September that they did not authorize her to file thousands of dollars in itemized deductions listed on their 2004-07 tax returns.
Originally, Sullivan was charged with 16 counts alleging she filed $652,345 in fraudulent deductions. Authorities said there were $481,798 in false deductions connected to the 14 counts for which she was tried.
The total tax loss to taxpayers was $85,386.
Sullivan told Barbour she has always tried to be a law-abiding citizen.
“I hope the court can see I’m not a bad person. I’m not asking the court to feel sorry for me, but I’m asking for mercy,” Sullivan said, choking back emotions.
Sullivan said she never made an excessive amount off the tax business and the sole purpose was to take care of her family. She said she has a disabled adult son and a daughter in college.
Also, she said, her home mortgage is now four months behind and she can’t afford to pay her car loan.
But Barbour told Sullivan she should have thought about her son and other matters when she was filing the false tax returns.
She is scheduled to report to federal prison Feb. 15.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst asked Barbour to sentence Sullivan to the maximum 41 months under federal sentencing guidelines. He asked for an increased penalty because he said she tried to obstruct justice.
Patricia Ann Sullivan, aka Patricia Hallmon Sullivan, aka Patricia Odom, 46, was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Jackson to three years in federal prison for aiding and abetting in the filing of false tax returns for customers.
Sullivan was convicted Sept. 30 on eight of 14 counts she faced.
“I don’t know why you did it,” U.S. District Judge William Barbour Jr. told Sullivan at the end of her sentencing hearing. “It doesn’t seem to be in your character. You did it, however.”
In addition to the government, the victims are the taxpayers, who didn’t know Sullivan was submitting false information on their returns, the judge said.
Barbour said the taxpayers are having to pay back refunds they weren’t entitled to receive.
Several witnesses testified during Sullivan’s trial in September that they did not authorize her to file thousands of dollars in itemized deductions listed on their 2004-07 tax returns.
Originally, Sullivan was charged with 16 counts alleging she filed $652,345 in fraudulent deductions. Authorities said there were $481,798 in false deductions connected to the 14 counts for which she was tried.
The total tax loss to taxpayers was $85,386.
Sullivan told Barbour she has always tried to be a law-abiding citizen.
“I hope the court can see I’m not a bad person. I’m not asking the court to feel sorry for me, but I’m asking for mercy,” Sullivan said, choking back emotions.
Sullivan said she never made an excessive amount off the tax business and the sole purpose was to take care of her family. She said she has a disabled adult son and a daughter in college.
Also, she said, her home mortgage is now four months behind and she can’t afford to pay her car loan.
But Barbour told Sullivan she should have thought about her son and other matters when she was filing the false tax returns.
She is scheduled to report to federal prison Feb. 15.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst asked Barbour to sentence Sullivan to the maximum 41 months under federal sentencing guidelines. He asked for an increased penalty because he said she tried to obstruct justice.
Most of the taxpayers said they never saw their tax returns prior to Sullivan filing them on their behalf.
Truck driver James McWilliams of Jackson said Sullivan put several false deductions on his return, including more than $14,000 in expenses for a non-existent business.
He said the IRS audited his and his wife’s returns. Sullivan told them she would handle it and advised them to create false receipts.
Under cross-examination by James Powell III, one of Sullivan’s attorneys, McWilliams admitted he and his wife created the false receipts.
Sullivan was a key witness in all six of Flowers’ trials. In June, a jury again convicted Flowers and sentenced him to death for killing four people in a Winona furniture store in 1996.
The state Supreme Court reversed three earlier convictions of Flowers, and two trials ended in mistrials.
Sullivan, who went by the last name Hallmon at the time, was Flowers’ next door neighbor when the Tardy Furniture store shooting happened. She testified she saw Flowers four times that morning and he was wearing a pair of Fila Grant Hill athletic shoes.
A bloody shoe print at the furniture store matched a size 10 of that type of Fila shoe.
Sullivan’s other attorney, Mike Horan of Grenada, told Barbour that Sullivan’s testimony led to Flowers’ convictions. Horan said he was an assistant district attorney in Montgomery County for three of Flowers’ trials.
Sullivan’s brother, Odell Hallmon,also was a prosecution witness against Flowers.
Hallmon, a former cellmate of Flowers, has testified that Flowers confessed to him that he killed the four people.
Flowers has maintained his innocence and is appealing his latest conviction.
Friends of Justice 
Another witness, a la Tom Coleman, whose testimony is not credible. Will Curtis Flowers be as fortunate as the Tulia defendants? Not unless Mississippi authorities, like those in Texas, are embarrassed into doing the right thing.