6th trial for the same crime, jury members abused

[Jim Johnson]

Curtis Flowers, a 39-year-old African-American is to stand trial for an unprecedented sixth time for the murder of four people in Mississippi in 1996.
So far, two of his trials have resulted in mistrials and three in convictions that were later overturned.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8377236.stm

[WithoutAPaddle]

The BBC article cited above is needlessly inflammatory and IMHO, poorly written, but I investigated this further and there is a lot of merit to the notion that defendant Flowers has not been treated fairly by the Mississippi justice system.  You  can read more on the subject at the Friend's of Justice web page dedicated to this case.

Basically, white jurors hearing the evidence believe it proves Flowers guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, while black jurors do not.  In what I consider to have been the fairest of the five trials, the seven white jurors voted to convict while the five black jurors voted to acquit.  The prosecution, which had previously used all of its peremptory challenges to arbitrarily exclude black jurors - resulting in that guilty verdict being overturned - has since even tried to have a special law passed allowing it to move the trial to another venue as they could get a more favorable (read: "hanging") jury elsewhere.

Based on the evidence as presented in the Friends of Justice article, I wouldn't vote to convict, but in fairness to the prosecution, it is an advocacy piece and so it may not show all of the strengths of the prosecution's case or the weaknesses of the defense's.

It is inaccurate to say that the linked article alleged that "jury members" had been abused, since the article only refers to an incident involving just one juror: a Mr. James Bibbs.  According to the judge, juror Bibbs had attempted to persuade other jurors that some police had testified inaccurately regarding their investigation of the crime based on his own personal knowledge of the situation that he had gleaned by having been in the proximity of their investigation while the crime was being investigated.  The judge claimed that Mr. Bibbs had committed perjury by having sworn, during voir dire, that he had no personal knowledge of the matter beyond that which he had read or heard in the media, but in fairness to juror Bibbs, at the time he swore that, he probably didn't consider that he might eventually hear an officer testify to having been on the crime scene investigating the crime at a place and time where and when Bibbs was present, and that the officer's testimony in that regard would be inconsistent with Bibbs's recollections.  Perjury is very difficult to prove, and in this instance, it would have been impossible to prove even if it were true.  While it was reckless of the judge to make his accusation from the bench, I am inclined to regard it as an example of garden-variety stupidity by a judge who had become exasperated by seeing that this one hold-out had basically blown the fifth trial in this matter that had been held over a span of twelve years.