Friends of Justice

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” William Faulkner

“The further backwards you look, the further forward you can see.”  Winston Churchill

The Flowers Case in Brief

On the morning of July 16, 1996, four people were brutally murdered at a furniture store in the small Mississippi town of Winona.  By 11:00 am everybody had heard the news: Bertha Tardy, the proprietor of Tardy ’s Furniture, had been killed execution style.  Carmen Rigby, Tardy’s longtime bookkeeper, had suffered the same fate, as had hired hands, Bobo Stewart and Robert Golden. Golden was black, the other three victims were white. Six months later, Curtis Flowers, a young black Winona resident who had worked three days for Bertha Tardy, was arrested and charged with the brutal murder of four innocent people.

Thirteen years, $300,000 and five trials later, Mr. Flowers remains behind bars and the state has been unable to obtain a final conviction.

The first trial was held in Tupelo, MS in 1997 and the second trial was in Gulfport two years later.  District Attorney Doug Evans was determined to convict Curtis Flowers four times: once for each cold-hearted murder.  It was a risky strategy.  To pull it off, Evans had to limit the evidence in each trial to a single victim and that was a virtual impossibility.  Evans won guilty verdicts and death sentences in Tupelo and Gulfport, but both trials were overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court.

In February of 2004, Curtis Flowers was found guilty, yet again, on four murder counts.  The trial was held in Winona, the county seat of Montgomery County.  The Winona Times ran a special edition featuring a large head shot of Flowers beside graphic pictures from the murder scene. Victims were shown lying in their own blood. Several residents were outraged by the pictorial spread and wrote angry letters to publisher, Dale Gerstenlager. Gerstenlager responded that, apart from the photographs, readers couldn’t appreciate what a terrible deed Flowers had done.

The verdict would not stand.  According to former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz, “We reversed because the jury selection process ended up not being fair. Every challenge the state had was used against African Americans and the only African American that was seated was when the state ran out of challenges and could not challenge anymore and one was seated.”

Doug Evans knew he would have a hard time getting a conviction in Winona if even a single African American was seated on the jury.  In a county that is half black, a jury with eleven white jurors couldn’t be produced legally, so Evans broke the law. 

It was an act of desperation.  In Winona’s white community, Flowers’ guilt is a no-brainer–as obvious as the sun in a clear blue sky. 

Black jurors have been much harder to convince.

The case against Flowers is circumstantial.  He can’t produce a convincing alibi for his activities the morning of the murders.  A gunshot residue test taken three hours after the murders found a single micron of residue on the web of his right thumb.  But the real clincher was thebloody footprint found at the scene of the crime.  Tests prove it was made by a size 10.5 Grant Hill Fila tennis shoe, and a box for precisely that shoe was found in the dresser drawer of the girlfriend Flower’s was living with.  Granted, there were no shoes in the box (it was filled with hair ribbons), but the shoe box in the dresser has been the heart of the state’s case.

Doug Evans had the shoe box evidence nailed down within a few weeks of the murders, but Flowers wasn’t arrested until January of 1997, half a year later.  In the interim, Evans and his invgestigator, John Johnson, cobbled together a list of witnesses who could trace Flowers’ movements on that fatal morning.

The state’s theory of the crime is relatively simple.  Curtis Flowers was angry because Bertha Flowers wanted to deduct $400 worth of damaged batteries from his paycheck.  Set on revenge, Flowers rose early on the morning of the crime and walked to the Angelica garment factory, five-to-ten minutes from his home.  There, shortly after 7:00 am, Flowers stole a handgun from the car of his uncle, Doyle Simpson.  Flowers returned home for a brief period.  Then, just after 9:00 am, he walked to the Tardy’s furniture store, killed four people in cold blood, stole $400 from the cash register, ditched the gun, ran home, disposed of his clothes and the Grant Hill Filas he was wearing and stuck the $400 in the headboard of his girlfriend’s bed.

It took six months to find witnesses who could place Flowers at the Angelica factory and along the various routes the state believed he traveled on the day of the crime.

On the surface, this looks like an airtight case, and it has generally been reported as such (to the extent it has been reported at all).  But at Flowers’ fourth trial in December of 2007, all five black jurors voted to acquit while all seven white jurors voted to convict.

A frustrated Doug Evans returned to the Montgomery County courthouse in Winona less than a year later for the fifth trial.  Three black jurors were selected, but they were all solidly middle class and well-connected to the white community.  Two of the black jurors were willing to trade a guilty verdict for a life sentence.  But James Bibbs, a retired Winona school teacher, hung the jury.  Judge Joey Loper embodied the outrage of Winona’s white community.  He had Bibbs dragged into the courtroom.  Loper told the recalitrant juror that he had lied to get on the jury and demanded that DA Evans file perjury charges.  Loper then insisted that Evans lobby other Mississippi prosecutors in support of a law that would allow the state to file motions for a change of venue (something only defense attorneys could do). 

A bill giving prosecutors the right to call a jury from a multi-county district in cases that went to trial three times without a final conviction was supported by state senator Lydia Chassaniol and state representative Bobby Howell.  The bill was introduced in the 2009 legislative session and sailed through the Senate without serious opposition.  In the House, however, it was killed in committee by the African American chairman of the house judiciary committee.

The same bill is currently being debated in the Mississippi Legislature.

Meanwhile, Judge Loper and DA Evans were forced to recuse themselves from the case against James Bibbs.  The Mississippi Attorney General’s took over the case and promptly dropped the charges due to a lack of evidence. 

A sixth trial is scheduled for June 7, 2010.  This time, the world will be watching.

A brief primer in wrongful conviction: the case of Curtis Flowers

Why are we so convinced that Curtis Flowers is innocent?  Two reasons: the state’s theory of the crime doesn’t fit the evidence, and the state manufactured phony evidence by manipulating, badgering and bribing witnesses.

The gun that ended the lives of Bertha Tardy, Carmen Rigby, Bobo Stewart and Robert Golden belonged to Doyle Simpson.  All are agreed on that point.  Simpson made two visits to his car on the morning of the crime and reported that his gun had been stolen from a locked glove compartment shortly before the crime was committed.  Catherine Snow, one of Simpson’s co-workers, claims she saw Curtis Flowers leaning against Simpson’s car at 7:30 that morning.

But is Doyle Simpson credible under oath?  When first interviewed, he told investigators that he bought the weapon from his brother Robert.  When that story fell apart, Simpson testified that he bought the gun from a friend named “Ike”.  Simpson calls Ike a good friend but doesn’t know his last name.

The murder weapon belonged to Doyle Simpson–that much seems clear.  But was the gun in the glove compartment of Simpson’s car the morning of the murders? 

Doyle Simpson is no stranger to the streets.  He has used drugs and has probably been involved in the drug trade.  Back in the day, Simpson’s throat was slit and his body was unceremoniously deposited in a tree outside New Orleans.  Miraculously, the Winona hustler survived.  But whoever tried to kill him had no regard for human life and dignity.  Much like the person who pulled the trigger five times in the Tardy Furniture Store.

On the witness stand, Doyle Simpson has the demeanor of a scared rabbit.  Did he make his gun available to some very bad people who made him an offer he couldn’t refuse?  In the most recent trial, in September, 2008, Simpson made an interesting slip.  Asked to specify when he put the gun in his car, Simpson replied, “The day before they stole it.”

Who, we are left to wonder, are “they”. 

Prosecutors argue that Curtis Flowers murdered Bertha Tardy because she had docked $82 from his pay to cover the cost of damaged lawn mower batteries. Flowers worked at the furniture store for three days just prior to the July 4th weekend in 1996. When Curtis didn’t return to work after the holiday and when he eventually contacted Ms. Tardy he was informed that he had been replaced. Prosecutor Doug Evans claims this provided Flowers with a sufficient motive for the most vicious murder in Winona history.

Finally, Curtis Flowers can’t provide an iron clad alibi for the morning of the murder. He maintains that, apart from a brief visit to his sister’s home, he spent most of the fateful morning alone at home.

This sounds like a weak circumstantial case until you start asking hard questions. Then it falls apart altogether.

Everyone agrees that Bertha Tardy was the killer’s primary target and that the other three victims were murdered in an attempt to eliminate witnesses. All four victims were killed execution style with a bullet to the back of the head fired at relatively short range. Three of the victims were found lying side-by-side.

If Ms. Tardy was killed first, how could a single gunman keep the witnesses from fleeing? The evidence suggests the work of two gunmen: a single shooter and an accomplice.

The murders were methodical and horribly efficient: three of the victims died from a single shot. The Tardy murders (as they are now called) were not the fruit of blind rage. For practical and psychological reasons, only an experienced professional with a callous disregard for human life could pull off a crime like this, and no one in Winona (certainly not Curtis Flowers) fits that profile.

No employer-employee disagreement in Winona history ever spiraled into murder; what made July 16th, 1996 any different? If Curtis Flowers entered the store engulfed in homicidal rage how could he work with such frightful efficiency?

There is general agreement that the murder weapon was stolen from Doyle Simpson’s glove compartment. But the state has never been able to explain how Curtis Flowers could have known there was a gun in his uncle’s locked glove compartment unless Doyle told him? Simpson usually kept the gun at his mother’s home.

Questioned the day of the murder, Catherine Snow reported seeing a stranger leaning against Doyle’s car two hours before the likely time of the Tardy murders. Once it was common knowledge in the community that Flowers was the prime suspect, Ms. Snow was suddenly able to put a face to the man by the car. This is particularly odd considering that Snow knew Curtis Flowers from having seen him singing with a gospel group at her church.

No one could have known there was a gun in Doyle Simpson’s glove compartment unless Doyle himself told them were to look. A local gun points to a local killer, and an experienced killer from outside Winona would have valued such a weapon. A streetwise hustler with addiction issues, Doyle Simpson had friends in low places.

Why then did a test reveal a single micron of gun powder residue on the defendant’s right thumb? Gun powder residue is ubiquitous in police cars and police stations and Flowers had been in both environments immediately prior to the test. Doyle Simpson was interviewed as soon as Flowers left the building but neither he nor any other suspect was tested for gunpowder residue. This suggests that investigators had marked Flowers as the killer three hours after the crime and were studiously ignoring evidence pointing in any other direction.

 A single micron of residue is the tiniest fragment that exists in nature. If Flowers had washed his hands before the interview no residue could have survived—the stuff is that ephemeral. But if Flowers was the killer, his entire body would have been bathed in residue. A single micron of residue suggests the kind of incidental contact that is inevitable in a police car or a police station.

The police have a bloody footprint at the crime scene, but no bloody shoe. They recovered a shoebox full of Christmas ribbons from a girlfriend’s closet. Like the footprint, the box was for size 10.5 shoe, America’s most popular men’s shoe size. There would have been nothing remarkable about Curtis Flowers owning a pair of Grant Hill Fila running shoes, of course; they were the hottest selling shoe in the nation at the time. But his girlfriend, Connie Moore, insists she bought the shoes for an adolescent son and the son has confirmed her story.

Speculation on the subject of Grant Hill sneakers is of academic interest. The footprint discovered at the Tardy Furniture store wasn’t left by the killers. The state suggests that approximately $300 was taken from the cash register near where three of the bodies were discovered. If so, one of the victims was probably forced to hand over the money before being killed. The killers didn’t step in the blood because, while they were at the scene of the crime, there was little blood to step in.

Sam Jones, an elderly black gentleman who occasionally helped out at Tardy Furniture, was the first person to arrive at the crime scene. Sam is now dead, but at the first trial he testified that he saw no trail of bloody footprints when he first observed the crime scene—and he was in the building between five and eight minutes. Jones then hurried off to a hardware store where he called 911 and waited for a police car to arrive at the scene.

Porky Collins testified at two trials prior to his death. Collins had a Wal-Mart receipt showing that he left the store at 9:43, about the same time Sam Jones arrived at Tardy’s Furniture. Collins then drove three miles to a mechanics shop, made a brief stop at home, then drove by Tardy’s Furniture on his way to the cleaners. By this time, Sam Jones had left the furniture store and was still waiting for the police to arrive.

As Collins passed Tardy’s he saw two black men engaged in a passionate argument. One man had his hands on the hood of a brown car; the other was standing beside the car making dramatic hand gestures. Collins only got the brief glimpse of one man’s eyes as he passed.

Concerned by what he had seen, Porky Collins made the block and when he returned to the scene the two men were crossing the street on foot. Collins testified that he didn’t know where the men went next.

For the most part, Porky Collins makes a convincing witness. Any mistakes he made can be laid at the feet of law enforcement. Although he shared his story with the police on the day of the crime, Collins wasn’t shown a photo array for five weeks. He was showing an interest in one of first six pictures he was shown when an officer asked, “Do you know Doyle Simpson?” This comment cued Collins that he had the wrong man. Shown a second array of pictures, Collins’ finger wandered to a photo where the person’s head was much bigger than the heads in the other pictures. “Do you know Curtis Flowers?” an officer asked. This told Collins he had the right man. By August 24th it was common knowledge in Winona that Flowers was the state’s prime suspect.

Although Collins’ identification of Flowers can’t be taken seriously, the central thrust of his testimony should be taken seriously. Collins saw two men arguing in front of Tardy’s just after Sam Jones had left the building. If either man was involved in the crime it is unlikely that they would be ostentatiously drawing attention to themselves. It is more likely that they arrived at Tardy’s Furniture store just after Sam Jones disappeared into the hardware store. The lights inside Tardy’s were on, the door was unlocked, and Jones’ truck was parked on the street outside—the store appeared open for business. If the two men wandered inside they could easily have stepped in the steadily-growing pool of blood on the floor.

The fact that Sam Jones saw no blood track when he first entered the store and that he and Police Chief Johnny Hargrove immediately spied bloody footprints shortly after 10:21 makes this scenario probable.

This explains the dispute Collins witnessed. One man, believing they were the first to encounter a crime scene, wanted to file a report with the police. The second man protested that a black man with the slightest connection to the scene would immediately become a suspect. This argument prevailed and the two men left the scene.

This reconstruction is hypothetical, of course, but it is the only scenario that fits all the known facts. The state’s theory, by comparison, can’t account for any of the facts I have noted.

Prosecutor Doug Evans has a love-hate relationship with Porky Collins’ testimony. With considerable coaching from law enforcement, Collins placed Curtis Flowers at the scene of the crime even though the events he witnessed transpired at least half an hour (and as much as an hour) after the killings took place and involved a second person the state can’t account for.

As an ex-employee, Curtis Flowers knew that Tardy Furniture has a back entrance. If he were the murderer he certainly wouldn’t have made a spectacle of himself at the murder scene.

There has never been any room in the state’s theory of the crime for an accomplice. The state has an impressive stable of eyewitnesses, but they all report seeing Curtis Flowers walking alone.

Although Sam Jones, Porky Collins and Catherine Snow talked to the police the day of the murder, none of the other witnesses didn’t recall seeing Curtis Flowers on the morning of the murder until a $30,000 reward appeared on the black side of town.

Few of the states witnesses came forward voluntarily even then. I have interviewed several people who were picked up by police officers, taken to police stations in Winona or nearby Greenwood and enticed with the $30,000 reward. They were also threatened with dire legal consequences if they refused to cooperate with the investigation. This carrot and stick approach, applied over the six-month period between Flowers initial interview and his arrest in early 1997, produced a string of “weak-minded black folk” (as one local pastor described them) who can’t get their story straight.

Curtis Flowers walked to work at Tardy’s on three occasions two weeks before the crime and some or all of the witnesses may have seen him pass on his way to work. But could they remember, weeks and even months later, that they had seen Curtis on the morning of the Tardy murders?

This explains why the physical descriptions presented by the various witnesses fail to overlap at a single point. Memory is fragile of course, and we should expect some discrepancies in testimony. But when one witness has Curtis wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, the next has him in dress clothes, and a third has him decked out in a jogging outfit the state has a problem. Either these folks are describing actual sightings that took place on different days or they are lying. The evidence suggests we are dealing with a bit of both.

Mary Fleming, the woman who says she saw Curtis walking in the direction of Tardy’s, gave her statement seven months after the crime. Her Curtis was wearing a gray jacket, white shirt and brown pants. Mary Fleming is the aunt of Clemmie Fleming, a young woman who claims she saw Curtis Flowers running away from Tardy furniture on the morning of the crime. Clemmie has admitted to friends and family members (one of whom has an audio tape) that her testimony is a complete fabrication. The elderly man who was driving Clemmie around town that morning grudgingly corroborated her story at the first trial. But he surprised the state at the second trial by telling the jury he had been bullied into false testimony at the first trial and wanted to set the record straight. In his amended testimony he saw a man (who looked nothing like Curtis Flowers) running before picking Clemmie up at her home and never drove by Tardy’s.

And then there is Patricia Hallmon Sullivan, the woman who says she saw Curtis Flowers leaving his home at 7:30 the morning of July 16th. Ms. Sullivan’s brother, Odell Hallmon, says he talked Patricia into concocting a Curtis Flowers story so they could split the $30,000 reward. Odell Hallmon put this admission in letter to Lola Flowers (the mother of the defendant) and defense attorney Andre de Gruy—two people who had nothing to give him in exchange. Then, realizing how unwise it is for prisoners doing hard labor at the notorious Parchman prison plantation to get on the wrong side of the prosecution, Hallmon changed his story. He only wrote the letters, he now says, because Curtis Flowers promised to supply him with free cigarettes. What kind of prosecutor would use the testimony of a witness who had publicly surrendered the last shred of credibility?

A prosecutor who is rapidly running out of options.

At the first trial, the state produced two jailhouse snitches who testified that they had heard Curtis Flowers confess to the Tardy murders. These witnesses didn’t appear at subsequent trials. Since Doug Evans uses dubious witnesses like Odell Hallmon, the disappearance of the jailhouse snitches remains a mystery.

Under enormous pressure to produce an indictment, Doug Evans and investigator John Johnson latched onto the first suspect who lacked an airtight alibi. Unable to build a solid case against this man, Evans and Johnson used threats, bribes and flagrant manipulation to shape testimony around Flowers. The Winona newspaper reveals that Evans and Johnson were the targets of harsh criticism when Curtis Flowers was finally arrested in early 1997.

A dispassionate review of the available evidence suggests the following conclusions:

• Bertha Tardy was the victim of a professional hit

• Two assailants were involved

• Neither man was from Winona

• Doyle Simpson made his gun available to the killers

• Simpson knows who took his gun but may not know the identity of the killers

• The bloody footprint wasn’t left by the killers

Therefore, the state of Mississippi should release Curtis Flowers to the free world and appoint an independent investigator to conduct a fresh and unbiased investigation.

But how did a case this outrageous ever go to trial five times?  The answer lies in the history of Montgomery County.

Curtis Flowers and the cruel legacy of Montgomery County

We dare not bury the past while the past buries the innocent.

In July, 1996, four people were killed execution style at a Montgomery County furniture store: owner Bertha Tardy, bookkeeper Carmen Rigby, and two hired men, Bobo Stewart and Robert Golden.  Golden was black, the other three victims were white.  Six months later, Curtis Flowers, a young black Winona resident who had worked three days for Bertha Tardy, was arrested and charged with the brutal murder of four innocent people.  Thirteen years, $300,000 and five trials later, Mr. Flowers remains behind bars and the state has been unable to obtain a final conviction.

No capital defendant in American history has ever gone to trial six times on the same facts.  Curtis Flowers of Winona, Mississippi will soon be the first. 

Winona is county seat of Montgomery County, a section of Mississippi that periodically produces startling narratives.

In 1937, two black Montgomery County bootleggers, Roosevelt Townes and Bootjack McDaniels, were accused of murdering and robbing a local merchant.  The two men entered not guilty pleas at their arraignment and were being escorted back to the county jail in Winona when they were released into the custody of a large white mob.  Townes and McDaniels were driven up the road to a field near Duck Hill where they were tied to trees and surrounded by brushwood.  As a crowd of 500 looked on, the two men were tortured with blowtorches.  Ears and fingers melted under the intense heat before the victims relented.  They were then shot to death and their bodies burned.  Loved ones were not allowed to remove the charred remains for weeks after the event.

The Duck Hill lynchings were reported by the Associated Press and featured in TIME magazine.  After a particularly grisly account was read from the floor of Congress, the House passed the first anti-lynching law in American history.  A few weeks later, passions having cooled, southern senators used the filibuster to kill the anti-lynching bill.

In 1960, Montgomery County was back in the news when Sheriff Lawrence King was accused of hiring two black men to murder his deputy, William L. Kelly.  King had reportedly been sleeping with his deputy’s wife.  When all three defendants were charged with murder, former Mississippi governor James P. Coleman stepped forward to represent the white defendant.  All three defendants received life sentences and eventually died in Parchman prison.

Although Montgomery County is 45% black, not a single African American was registered to vote in 1963.  The civil rights movement arrived in the county in June of that year, when Fannie Lou Hamer, Annell Ponder and several other black women were refused service at the white restaurant at the Winona bus station.  Arrested by Sheriff Earl Wayne Patridge, his deputies, and a state trooper, the four women were beaten and sexually humiliated at the county jail.  Fannie Lou Hamer was pummeled with a blackjack wielded by two black inmates who had been threatened with additional charges if they didn’t cooperate and rewarded with corn whiskey when they did.

When Fannie Lou Hamer was finally released from the Montgomery County Jail she had to be hospitalized for a full month and never fully recovered.  A year later, Hamer related the story of her brutal encounter with Montgomery County law enforcement before the credentials committee at the 1964 Democratic Conviction in Atlantic City.  Her testimony aired on all three national television stations and sparked outrage.

The men responsible for torturing Fannie Lou Hamer and her friends had to be tried in federal court when every prosecutor in the State of Mississippi refused to seek an indictment.  After a cursory federal trial in which the judge referred to the victims as socialist agitators and praised the defendants as upstanding public servants, a jury returned not guilty verdicts.

But isn’t there a statute of limitations on stigma?  With the dawning of the 21^st century, hadn’t Montgomery County outlived its reputation for racial injustice?

So it appeared.  Then a federal census revealed that African Americans comprised over 50% of the voting population of the Montgomery County town of Kilmichael.  The political grapevine suggested that a strong black candidate was running for mayor and at least three black candidates were eyeing seats on the city council.  The white mayor and all-white council resolved the problem by cancelling the 2001 election.

Kilmichael’s cancelled election was vetoed by the Department of Justice.  Five years later, when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 came up for ratification, Senator Ted Kennedy used Kilmichael’s election-that-wasn’t to argue that Mississippi still needed federal elections oversight.

In 1996 and 1997, Curtis Flowers was convicted of murder by juries in Tupelo and Gulfport, but the convictions were vacated by the Mississippi Supreme Court because of blatant prosecutorial misconduct.

In 2004, Flowers went to trial before an all-white jury at the Montgomery County courthouse in Winona. The conviction was overturned when the Supreme Court ruled that prosecutor Doug Evans had removed blacks from the jury for reasons that were not race-neutral.

In 2007, at the conclusion of Curtis Flowers’ fourth trial, a jury of five blacks and seven whites retired to deliberate.  All seven white jurors voted to convict; all five black jurors voted to acquit.

There were three black and nine white jurors when Curtis Flowers went to trial for the fifth time in September of 2008.  According to post-trial interviews, two of the black jurors were willing to vote guilty if the white jurors settled for a life sentence.  Convinced that Flowers was innocent, a retired school teacher named James Bibbs hung the jury.

At the conclusion of the fifth trial, Judge Joseph Loper had two requests for District Attorney Doug Evans: he wanted James Bibbs tried for perjury and he wanted the Mississippi legislature to pass a law allowing Doug Evans to choose a jury from an expanded seven-county judicial district.

In the spring of 2009, Senator Lydia Chassaniol successfully guided this bill through the Mississippi Senate, but the House bill, sponsored by Representative Bobby Howell of Kilmichael, was essentially vetoed by the black chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. 

As DA Doug Evans prepared to take Flowers to trial for an unprecedented sixth time, Montgomery County danced back into the media spotlight. State Senator Lydia Chassaniol gave a spirited pep talk to 2009 annual conference of the radically racist Council of Conservative Citizens, (the successor to the White Citizen’s Councils).  Chassaniol admitted that she belonged to the CCC but didn’t see why that made her a racist.  She appeared to be sincere.

Representative Bobby Howell, the Montgomery County Republican who carried the “Flowers Bill” in the state house, is one of the Council of Conservative Citizen’s best friends in the Mississippi Legislature.

Is an innocent man being framed in Montgomery County Mississippi; or has the strength of the prosecution’s case rendered history irrelevant?

Read on . . .

A Nice Girl Like You . . .

This is the first in a series of posts about the tragedy that has divided a Mississippi town. 

Lydia Chassaniol is in trouble.  How much trouble remains to be seen, but the Mississippi State Senator (R-Winona) has the regional blogosphere in an uproar.   

Remember the mid-to-late 1990s when prominent Mississippi politicians like Bob Barr and Trent Lott got too cozy with the Council of Conservative Citizens?  That’s the white separatist hate group the New York Times describes as having “a thinly-veiled white supremacist agenda”.  You can buy a “white pride” T-shirt on the CCC website and read headlines like: “The whole world treats Obama as a joke!” and “Mass immigration equals white genocide.”  

The CCC platform praises America’s “European” heritage and condemns “mixture of the races”.   CCC leaders still like to refer to ”Martin Looter Coon” and have described African Americans as “a retrograde species of humanity”.  According to Ward Schaefer of the Jackson Free Press, “Columnists in the CofCC’s newsletter have hyperventilated that non-white immigration to the U.S. was transforming the country into a ’slimy brown mass of glop.’”

You get the picture.

Either Barr and Lott didn’t realize what sort of a group they were addressing or they didn’t care.  But when the true nature of the CCC became public knowledge it was mea culpa time.  In the halcyon days of the CCC Mississippi politicians were lining up to speak at events like the yearly Blackhawk political rally that raises money for segregated private schools.  No more.  Although the election of America’s first black president has reversed a longstanding decline in membership, the CCC is but a shadow of its former self.  The Trent Lott scandal had a lot to do with that.

Which explains why Mississippi residents (Democrat, Republican and Libertarian) were shocked to learn that Lydia Chassaniol, a close ally of Governor Haley Barbour, had delivered a red meat speech to the annual meeting of the CCC in Jackson Mississippi in late June.  It is reported that Chassaniol’s oration on “Cultural Heritage in Mississippi” used recent tributes to Michael Jackson “a pedophile who’s being celebrated” as evidence that the U.S. is in decline.  She indicated that the government wants to “take from those who have and give to those who don’t want to work for it.” And she worried that the 2010 national census might hand over government “to the radical left.”

According to Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch, “Chassaniol ended her talk by encouraging her listeners to embrace their southern heritage. Describing the CCC as “lone voices crying in the wilderness,” Chassaniol assured her audience that “Seeing all of you here today gives me hope.”

Contacted by Beirich, the Senator freely admitted that she is a card carrying member of the Council of Conservative Citizens but denied being a racist. 

Alonzo Lewis, a black pastor from Carroll County (in Chassaniol’s district) has publicly taken his Senator to task.  “I wouldn’t associate myself with any hate group,” Lewis said. “For someone to do that sends a message to me that they somewhat or totally agree with their agenda.”

Filling out a CCC membership card gives the same impression.

Not everyone is upset with the Senator, however.  Mississippi Republican Party Chairman Brad White admits that he wouldn’t sign up to speak at a CCC event, but only because he doesn’t need the flack.  White refuses to criticize his colleague. 

The Greenwood Commonwealth is the only Mississippi newspaper to run an article on a controversy that is thus far limited to well-travelled blogs and independent publications like the Jackson Free Press.  The Commonwealth article mentions that Chassional had addressed the CCC, notes that the move is controversial and relates the woes that have befallen other Mississippi politicians associated with the group. 

The dozens of comments from Greenwood residents that follow the article are generally supportive.

” We, the residents of North Greenwood, need a branch of CCC,” one reader said.  ”We could meet at the Legion hut or the Confederate memorial building and I don’t care if they do support racist views, so does the Greenwood voters league along with the ACLU and the black panthers and the NAACP, the Rainbow Coalation, PUSH, the black caucus, the black mayors conference,the black rodeo, the million man march and numerous other black only organizations. It is time that the whites in this area got up off their lazy backsides and stood up for themselves and their heritage.”

Several other readers compared the CCC to the Greenwood Voters League suggesting that a pro-white organization is no more reprehensible than a pro-black group.  The fact that the Greenwood Voters League was created in the 1960s to protect prospective black voters from white retaliation doesn’t seem to register.

Greenwood is just down the road from Winona, Ms. Chassaniol’s hometown.  The Senator is in her mid-fifties, which means she was raised in a thoroughly Jim Crow environment.  In my next post I will focus on recent events in Winona that make Miss Lydia’s affiliations understandable.

 

A House Divided

In fairness, Senator Chassaniol isn’t the only fan of the Council of Concervative Citizens in the Mississippi Legislature.  Bobby Howell, the Republican State Representative from Kilmichael (another small town in Montgomery County) also has close ties with the organization.   Long after Lott and Barr retreated from the group, Bobby Howell was happily speaking at their conferences and attending the annual Blackhawk event supporting segregated private schools (Blackhawkis just down the road from both Winona and Kilmichael). 

 Senator Chassaniol and Representative Howell did the heavy lifting for a bill that was created to break a legal logjam in Montgomery County.   On July 16, 1996, between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m, four people were gunned down execution-style in Winona’s Tardy furniture store: Bertha Tardy, 59, and three employees, Carmen Rigby, 45, Derrick “Bobo” Stewart, 16, and Robert Golden, 42.  

Six months elapsed with no arrest and local residents were growing restive.  Then the police arrested a suspect.  The theory was that Curtis Flowers, a young man who had worked less than a week for Bertha Tardy, was so upset that $82 had been deducted from his paycheck (to cover damaged merchandise) that he was driven to the most heinous crime in the history of Montgomery County.

The case against Curtis Flowers is paper thin.  There is no murder weapon, no DNA, no fingerprints and no one witnessed the crime. Flowers, a model prisoner, has always maintained his innocence.   All the prosecution can muster is some weak physical evidence and reams of ambiguous testimony.   Credible witnesses don’t implicate Flowers and the folks who say they saw the prime suspect in the vicinity of the

furniture store are singularly unconvincing.  But the State’s has been enough to convince white jurors. 

Whoever pulled the trigger in the Tardy Furniture store is a monster.  Curtis Flowers is either guilty as charged or he is an innocent victim of wrongful prosecution.  White folks have no doubt that Curtis is the gunman.  Black folks, for the most part, are unconvinced.  Curtis Flowers earned a reputation as a goodnatured, fun-loving gospel singer.  Those who know him best doubt he could pull off a premeditated murder even if he wanted to–and they can’t imagine him wanting to.  Not Curtis.

The State’s case against Flowers can be compared to Colin Powell’s presentation at the United Nations.  None of the evidence is particularly convincing, but there’s lots of it.  Americans living in the emotional wake of 9-11 were desperate for justice.  We wanted to be convinced that our true enemy could be identified, crushed on the field of battle and brought to justice.  In retrospect, Powell’s “evidence” looks silly; but it was enough to convince a public desperate to believe.

The same can be said of the case against Curtis Flowers.  Reading through back issues of the Winona Times you encounter the implied argument that Flowers must be guilty because the crime was really, really awful.  The thought that we may never know who to blame for “the Tardy murders” is simply unacceptable. 

The first two Tardy trials ended with convictions and death sentences.  But the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed both convictions due to prosecutorial misconduct.  A third conviction was reversed when defense counsel was able to show that District Attorney Doug Evans was illegally keeping black residents off the jury. 

The fourth trial came as a dreadful shock to the white community: five black jurors returned not guilty verdicts while seven white jurors voted to convict.  The town, it seemed, was utterly divided along racial lines.

Hopes were high during the fifth trial (held in September of 2008) that a breakthrough was possible.  There were three black people on the jury, but one was a businessman who wrote a column in the Winona Times and maintained good relations with the white community, one had a background in law enforcement and the third was a retired school teacher.  None of the three was close to the Flower family.

It almost worked.  Post-trial interviews suggest that two of the black jurors were willing to convict if the white jurors would agree to a life sentence.  But James Bibbs, the retired school teacher, wasn’t having it.  He didn’t think the State had proved its case and he refused to budge. 

At the close of trial, James Bibbs was called into the courtroom and harangued by Judge Joseph (”Joey”) Loper.  To hear the judge tell it, Bibbs had lied his way onto the jury with the express purpose of hanging the jury.  He had raised his hand in open court and sworn that he could be impartial when, in truth, his mind was made up from the beginning. 

Furthermore, Loper said, Bibbs had told other jurors that he had spent the day of the murders visiting with friends at a lawnmower shop behind the Tardy Furniture store.  During trial, police officers testified that they had canvassed the neighborhood the day of the crime.  Bibbs allegedly told his fellow jurors that if that he didn’t see any officers in the area. 

According to Loper and DA Doug Evans, Bibbs perjured himself when he claimed during voir dire that he had no special knowledge about the case other than what he had gleaned from media reports.

Ray Carter, Curtis Flowers’ lead attorney, was so incensed by the judge’s verbal assault that he attempted to leave the courtroom.  Carter feared he might say something he would regret.  Judge Loper instructed the baillif to restrain Carter.  The defense attorney was dragged back to the front of the courtroom while the Judge continued his rant. 

When it was over, James Bibbs was escorted from the courtroom in handcuffs.  (An alternate on the jury was charged with perjury when evidence emerged suggesting that she had visited Curtis Flowers in prison and talked to him on the phone.  The evidence in this case appears to be solid).

According to Lydia Chassaniol, the indictment of James Bibbs proves that the jury pool in Montgomery County is hopelessly tainted. ”We’re looking for some remedy,” Chassaniol told reporters. “At the last (Flowers) trial, two jurors were indicted for perjury. Now, does that sound like a tainted jury pool?”

The Senator assured the Associated Press that “It just has to be awful for the families of the victims.  Each time a trial is held, they have to relive the horror of loved ones being murdered. But I would think that the defendant’s family would want some relief, too. It’s got to be just as hard on them.”

Mississippi residents have a constitutional right to be tried in their home county.  Defense counsel can request a change of venue; the State cannot.  According to the bill Chassaniol crafted, in capital cases that have gone to trial over three times, district attorneys would be allowed to pick a jury from the judicial district instead of the county.  In Mississippi history, only the Flowers case meets this standard.

If the bill had passed, DA Evans would have been able to pick a jury from a district that bumps up against Morgan Freeman’s hometown of Charleston to the Northwest and Neshoba County (of Mississippi Burning fame) to the southeast.  A great place to pick an all-white jury sure to bring closure to the Flowers case and an end to Winona’s heartache.

Chassaniol’s bill passed the Senate without great difficulty.  But the House version sponsored by Bobby Howell was killed by black Democratic judiciary chair Edward Blackmon. 

That means a sixth trial for Curtis Flowers (the date hasn’t been set) and another year of racial polarization. 

Winona’s white community don’t understand why black jurors can’t see the strength of the State’s case against  Flowers.  From the white side of the street it all looks so simple.  But when you see politicians like Lydia Chassanioland Bobby Howell consorting with the Council of Conservative Citizens the objectivity issue appears in a different light. 

James Bibbs goes to trial in Yazoo, Mississippi on July 28th.  Friends of Justice will be there.  In my next post I will consider the Bibbs case from the perspective of defense attorney Rob McDuff.

Supporters of Flowers Bill try again

Prom Night in Mississippi

Lydia Chassaniol’s decision to address a group famous for it’s crude racism has Mississippi baffled (thus far, no one else is paying attention).  Why would an astute politician with a reputation for Christian rectitude feel “hopeful” talking to a roomful of unapologetic white supremacists?  This doesn’t sound like political opportunism if you live in Washington DC or even Jackson, Mississippi; but Miss Lydia knows what’s she’s doing. 

In the late 1990s, just as Trent Lott and Bob Barr were apologizing for their association with the Council of Conservative Citizens, Governor Kirk Fordice refused to back away from the racist organization.  Lott and Barr had to adapt their rhetoric to the norms of Washington DC; Governor Fordice had only the voters of Mississippi to worry about.

Lydia Chassaniol had little to gain from addressing the CCC.  Only 300 delegates heard her speak and only a few dozen of that number will ever pull the lever in the Senator’s district.  So why bother?

Miss Lydia was sending a signal to the residents of communities like Winona, Greenwood and Grenada:  she feels their pain and shares their anxiety.  That’s a message that gets people elected.

In 1998, actor Morgan Freeman offered to pay for a racially integrated prom in his hometown of Charleston, Mississippi, just up the road from Winona.  White community leaders turned him down flat.   A decade later, with a team of Canadian documentarians in tow, Freeman renewed his offer.  This time he struck paydirt.  Well, sort of.  Several white families refused to participate (you can find an article and YouTube video here), but Charleston Mississippi (population 2,000) now has an integrated prom.

HBO will be airing the “Prom Night in Mississippi” documentary on July 20th.  The Southern Poverty Law Center is cooperating with the Freeman project (information and a second HBO promo here.)

 Morgan Freeman was the writing on the wall.  Other little communities in rural Mississippi, Winona among them, have also integrated their prom nights in the last few years. 

Lydia Chassanioldidn’t have to worry about black classmates when she attended Winona High School.  Mississippi schools didn’t integrate until 1970. Miss Lydia didn’t have to worry about black folks at church or at the country club either.  No one helped little towns like Charleston and Winona with the sea change of integration; they just fumbled through it as best they could.  You either sent your child to one of the segregation academies the Council of Conservative Citizens was sponsoring, or you made the most of a bad situation.

 This doesn’t mean the woman is entirely sheltered from American diversity.  She has taught in the integrated Winona public school system, she has worked with black children in the impoverished Mississippi Delta (on the western boundary of her district) and she served for many years on the Mississippi Parole Board (she is a big supporter of early parole and alternatives to incarceration).  It could be argued that small town Mississippians like Lydia Chassaniolhave more personal experience with black people than most white American suburbanites.

But the Senator’s heart and head live with the white folks who elected her and on whom her re-election depends.  How else do you explain the lovefest in Jackson with one of the most virulently racist organizations in America?

The first time I visited Winona I was repeatedly informed by black residents that only whites were welcome at the County Club and that the community had a restaurant with a white-only clientele.  Initially, I was skeptical.  Segregated restaurants are illegal.  I was told that if you don’t advertise yourself as a business the law doesn’t apply. 

Curious, I dropped in for breakfast. 

If you didn’t know the place was a restaurant only the cars parked outside would have given away the secret.  The food was terrific, my server was delightful, the camaraderie was touching and every person (other than cooks) who walked into the establishment during the ninety minutes I was in the place looked like me.  An old rusted sign hangs from an inside wall: “Dutch Mill Cafe”.  I guessed that the sign was once displayed out front in the good old days when segregated restaurants were the norm.

When you grasp the significance of segregated proms and white-only restaurants in the twenty-first century Lydia Chassaniol’s dalliance with a egregiously racist organization begins to make sense.

Strange Doings in Magnolia Country

 In my first post in this series I suggested that Mississippi State Senator Lydia Chassaniol was in trouble for addressing the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group that revels in its hatred of blacks, Jews, Latinos and the civil rights movement.

It appears I misspoke. 

Apart from the Greenwood Commonwealth, the Mississippi media has chosen to avert its eyes from the senator’s strange social dalliance.  Even when it was disclosed that Lydia Chassaniol is a proud, card-carrying member of the CCC, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger ignored the story.

Last summer, Gabriel Thompson spent a weekend at the CCC conference in Sheffield, Alabama.   Each speaker, Thompson reports, seemed more bigoted and mean-spirited than the last.  There seemed to be a competition to see who could toss the crowd the biggest slab of red meat.  It was quickly apparent that no comment, be it ever so vile, could offend a single member of the audience. 

The keynote speaker was Lt. Drew Lackey, the man who booked and fingerprinted Rosa Parks.  According to the promotional literature circulated by the Council of Conservative Citizens, the audience would “learn how Rosa Parks was a Communist and how the movement she inspired has torn apart the fabric of our nation.  A limited number of his books will be available to be autographed.”

As Gabriel Thompson listened in rapt unbelief, Lt. Lackey laid out the facts.

“He spent 22 years in law enforcement, retiring as the chief of police for Montgomery in 1970, and recently self-published a book about the period. He tells us a story about the violence that rocked the city.

“In reaction to the boycott, Lackey explains, whites had firebombed four churches and the homes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy. While Lackey was investigating one of the incidents, he noticed a car slowly driving by. ‘This is something that for some reason criminals like to do, to revisit the scene of the crime,’ he says. His police instincts were correct: He pulled the car over and won a confession from the men, who led him to a stash of explosives that they were planning to use in the future.’

“”Now, we had an all-white jury on that case,’ he continues. ‘They deliberated for 45 minutes, and they returned a ‘not guilty’ verdict on all counts.’ The people sitting at my table, whose name tags identify them as being from Missouri, start to clap. Others join in, some standing, until the room fills with applause.”

Did you catch that?  Lt. Lackey did his duty as a police officer by arresting suspected bombers.  But when an all-white jury refused to convict the confessed terrorists Lackey joined in the general jubilation.

Okay, that was 1956, so we must make allowances. 

But notice, when the speaker celebrates jury nullification his audience breaks into wild applause.  And now it’s 2008.

Question.  As a dues-paying member of the CCC was Lydia Chassaniol in the audience when Lt. Lackey was whipping his audience into a frenzy?  If so, did she hoot and whistle along with everybody else?

Frankly, I have trouble imagining a good Methodist layperson like Lydia Chassaniol participating in a racist bacchanal. 

And yet she belongs to the organization.  Every politician in Mississippi remembers how Trent Lott and Bob Barr were forced to disown the nasty-as-they-wanna-be CCC.  But Lydia Chassaniol doesn’t care what happens in Congress–she represents the good people of Winona, Greenwood and Grenada, Mississippi.

Chassaniol may have addressed her racist brothers and sisters as an act of principle.  Or perhaps the speech is best understood as a calculated political ploy.  Either way it raises questions that the Clarion-Ledger refusesto ask.

In fairness, it must be remembered that the Mississippi media gave Lott and Barr a pass until (and some would say after) the national media uncovered their unsavory associations.  (To the left, Lott appears with officials of the Council of Conservative Citizens in 1997. From left, William D. Lord, state coordinator; Mr. Lott; Tom Dover, president, and Gordon L. Baum, executive officer.)

This reluctance to point the finger is understandable in a state where civil rights resentment still runs high.  A publication struggling for survival can’t afford to antagonize a large percentage of its readership.

On July 28th, James Bibbs, a retired Winona school teacher goes on trial in Yazoo City, Mississippi.  Lydia Chassaniol and James Bibbs both grew up in Winona and taught in her public schools–that’s where the similarity ends. 

In a wild scene at the conclusion of a contentious trial, Judge Joseph Loper accused Mr. Bibbs of intentionally lying during voir dire so he could hang the jury. 

The evidence?  Bibbs allegedly told fellow jurors that, on the morning in question he had been visiting with friends at a lawnmower repair business just behind the furniture store where propietor Bertha Tardy and three employees were senselessly slaughtered.  During trial, a police officer testified that he and his fellow officers canvassed the neighborhood.  According to some jurors, Bibbs said he didn’t see any police canvassing that day.

According to Judge Loper, this constitutes perjury because, during voir dire, Bibbs said he knew nothing about the Flowers case apart from what he read in the newspaper.

True, Bibbs was within a block of the murder scene, but he didn’t see or hear anything bearing on the case. 

Not surprisingly, Rob McDuff, Bibbs’ attorney, filed a motion to quash the state’s indictment.  In his brief, McDuff argued that Judge Loper, having already concluded that Bibbs intentionally lied his way onto the jury, could not be objective.

Loper, realizing he had no defense against this argument, stepped aside.

Next, McDuff questioned the motivation and judgment of District Attorney Doug Evans.  Even if Judge Loper had already pronounced Bibbs guilty, Evans should have turned the case over to the state Attorney General’s office.  Having been involved in the voir dire process, Evans was a potential witness in the Bibbs trial. 

“Moreover,” McDuff argued, “by seeking the indictment itself rather than allowing another office to conduct an objective evaluation, the District Attorney’s office has raised the inevitable question of whether it sought the indictment because of improper motives rather than because of the evidence.  As explained in this brief, there is no evidence to support the charges in this indictment, which suggests that the indictment could not have been based upon an objective evaluation.”

So, why were the changes filed?

McDuff (pictured to the left) has a theory.  “The history of (the Curtis Flowers) case is characterized by a litany of prosecutorial misconduct.  The first three trials resulted in convictions but each was reversed for misconduct–the first two relating to improprieties during the presentation of evidence and the third relating to a Batson violation [an illegal attempt to keep blacks off the jury].”

Then McDuff cuts to the bone.  “If the District Attorney’s office was willing to engage in repeated misconduct in order to obtain a conviction and death sentence against Mr. Flowers, there is a significant possibility that, in its frustration over failing to secure a valid conviction after five trials, it may have indicted Mr. Bibbs in retaliation for being the lone vote for acquittal in the last trial.  This is particularly so in light of the weakness of the charges.”

Or might it be that Doug Evans (and Judge Loper) are taking the long view in this matter?

McDuff references United States v. Thomas which acknowledges that “The group of jurors favoring conviction may well come to view the ‘holdout’ or ‘holdouts’ not only as unreasonable, but as unwilling to follow the court’s instructions on the law”.

This, McDuff suggests, is precisely what is happening in Winona.  White residents can’t understand why black folks don’t see just how strong the state’s case against Curtis Flowers is.  White residents have been discussing the matter with one another since 1996 and there is no doubt in their minds that Curtis is the one that done it.  The state’s case is so strong, in fact, that black jurors are just like the folks who refused to convict the self-confessed bombers in Montgomery in 1957.  Montgomery jurors annulled a law they didn’t like and now it’s the black folks’ turn.

That’s one explanation for the racial divide in Winona, Mississippi?  Might there be another?

What if Winona native Lydia Chassaniol represents her community in the Senate and the court of public opinion.  Chassaniol can’t understand what’s so very wrong with the Council of Conservative Citizens.  How many Winona citizens share this sentiment?  Are we talking about a community longing for the good old pre-civil rights days with its segregated schools, drinking fountains and business establishments.

Perhaps that a bit too crude?   We may be dealing with a continuum stetching from folks on the left who merely resent the racist hick stereotype and stretching all the way over to the folks on the right who long for a return to their Confederate Zion. 

Might there even be a half dozen white Winona liberals who rejoice in the demise of Jim Crow?

Perhaps But my gut tells me that Lydia Chassaniol is vintage Winona. 

That’s not all bad.  Chassaniol is hard-working, intelligent, earnest, and well-intentioned.

She is also (and I really hate to put it so bluntly) an unrepentant racist.  How else do you explain the CCC membership.

If somebody out there can set me straight here I would be sincerely appreciative.  I mean that.  I have a daughter named Lydia.  When I see Chassaniol’s picture I know I would enjoy her company. 

And yet . . .

Enough of my liberal white-bashing.  What are we to make of the few members of Winona’s black community who have made it onto a jury?

In trial number 3, Doug Evans had fifteen peremptory challenges and used them all on African Americans.  That’s just one reason the Mississippi Supreme Court tossed out the conviction.

In trial number four, five black Winona residents made it onto the jury and all five voted “not guilty”. 

In trial five there were three black jurors and two voted with the white majority.

The contradiction is more apparent than real.  Experts on jury behavior talk about the “one-third rule”.  In a factually ambiguous case featuring a black defendant and a white victim, if minority jurors  comprise less than one-third of the jury they tend to vote with the majority.  When you have four or more minority jurors the chances of a minority-majority divergence rise substantially. 

“If this charge is allowed to stand,” Rob McDuff argues in his brief, “it will mean that any juror who disagrees with the overwhelming majority of the others can potentially be prosecuted for having a pre-conceived opinion, particularly in a controversial high-profile trial . . . The fact that this indictment was obtained by the District Attorney’s office that prosecuted Mr. Flowers could have a chilling effect on jurors in the present case.  Mr. Bibbs was the lone holdout juror in the Flowers murder case, which was tried by that office, and he subsequently was indicted by the same office.  This could send a message to jurors in the present case that if they do not vote with the District Attorney’s office, they too could find themselves indicted by that office.”

In the face of these arguments, Doug Evans recused himself from the Bibbs case.   For similar reasons, the July 28th trial will be held in Yazoo City instead of Winona.  Now that the Bibbs case has been dumped in the lap of a less-than-enthusiastic Attorney General’s office it’s hard to know what to expect.  The Bibbs trial is certain to be a learning experience.  I’ll keep you posted.

Bibbs perjury trial is postponed 

James Bibbs’ perjury trial has been postponed.  Jury selection was originally scheduled to begin on Tuesday, July 28th.  (I have dealt with the background to this story in an earlier post.)

The Jackson Clarion-Ledger may be ignoring state senator Lydia Chassaniol’s intimate ties to one America’s most racist organizations, but the paper has been faithfully following the Bibbs case.  Earlier this year, Chassaniol sponsored legislation designed to expand the jury pool in the Curtis Flowers case to a five-county district (Flowers is pictured to the left).  Current law stipulates that a defendant has a constitutional right to stand trial in his or her county of residence.

Because Montgomery County is over 50% black, it will inevitably produce more black jurors than most Mississippi counties.  Moreover, the Flowers family has a reputation in the African American community as stable, religious and friendly.  As a result, most black jurors are open to the possibility that Curtis Flowers might be innocent.  After five murder trials and three convictions, it is difficult to find a white resident of socially segregated Winona who doesn’t think the case against Flowers is overwhelming.

This racial perception gap is evident in the comments section at the end of the Clarion-Ledger article.  Those who think Flowers murdered Bertha Tardy and three other innocent people in 1996 also tend to believe that juror James Bibbs is guilty of perjury.  Readers who think the case against Flowers is weak see Bibbs as the victim of a vindictive prosecutor.

“It’s a shame race has been used to prohibit justice in this case,” one reader writes.  ”This is about a violent animal with no compassion for anyone that took the lives of innocent people. Everyone (black and white) should be united in bringing these animals to justice not matter the race. This could happen to any of us as long as thugs like Flowers are allowed to walk free. With the overwhelming evidence in this case and the fact that he has already been tried and convicted three times should be enough for anyone. Instead we continue to waste taxpayer money on technicalities. What a farce.”

Another reader disagrees:

NO, that is NOT the way the justice system is supposed to work. You do not base your decision or vote on past trials and juries. I don’t know if he is guilty or not. However I do know the verdict should be based on evidence presented during this trial alone.

A third person thinks DA Doug Evans prosecuted juror Bibbs as tactic of intimidation:

It appears to me that they are trying to send a message to the next group that serve on the jury that if you don’t find Flowers guilty you could be charged with the same charges as Bibbs! It won’t work! People will vote the way they see it! I agree when you prosecute someone on the thin evidence here, it could send an unfortunate message that people are being prosecuted because of the way they vote on the jury. That is completely improper.  Only in Mississippi! It’s time for the Feds to come in and clean this up! 

Did Curtis Flowers casually massacre four innocent people in a furniture store and then go about his business as if nothing had happened?  If so, he defintely fits the “violent animal” profile.  

But what if the “violent animal” shoe doesn’t fit? 

Prior to the Tardy murders, Curtis was known as a goodnatured gospel singer.  Since being locked up in 1996, Flowers has been a model prisoner best known for leading the singing at worship services. 

I recently talked to a prison guard who has been watching Flowers carefully for several years and is convinced the man isn’t capable of committing such a heinous crime.

“He ’bout one of the finest young men I’ve ever seen in my whole life,” the guard told me.  “He’s one of the nicest people ever put on a pair of pants.  He goes to church, he’s free-hearted, he’d give you his last dime.  He doesn’t look like somebody who did the crime.  He sleeps sound.  If you puttin’ on, there’ll be a time when you slip up.”

According to the guard, other prisoners frequently remark that Curtis doesn’t fit the killer profile.

But I digress.

You may be wondering why the perjury trial of James Bibbs was postponed at the eleventh hour? 

When Judge Joseph Loper hauled Mr. Bibbs into court and pronounced him guilty of perjury, the case should have been turned over to the Attorney General’s office.  Bibbs had just robbed prosecutor Doug Evans of a long-sought conviction and Evans could hardly be seen as objective.  Moreover, Evans was a potential fact witness at trial.  Eventually, the case was turned over the Mississippi AG’s office and handed down to the first prosecutor with the time to take it. 

Unlike DA Evans, the new prosecutor has nothing personal against the defendant; he’s just doing his job.  Defense attorney Rob McDuff suggested that the AG’s office should take a good hard look at this case before proceeding.  The special prosecutor agreed to do that.

That’s all we know at present and I’m not inclined to read any deeper meaning into the postponement.  I will be writing more about the background of the Flowers case in the near future.

Strom Thurmond’s Ghost