In The Dark - S2 Update: Back to Winona

Episode Date: September 18, 2018

Two months after the season ended, we return to Winona to see what has changed. Turns out, a lot. Curtis Flowers' mother has died. The whole town is talking about the case. Flowers' defense lawyers are including our findings in their legal filings to the Supreme Court. Citizens are trying to file bar complaints against the district attorney, Doug Evans. One man has gone into hiding, his personal safety threatened because he spoke to us. In this update episode, we look at what's happened in Winona since our last episode and what happens next with Curtis Flowers' case.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Yeah. Free Curtis Flower, man. I might mess up a little bit. Yeah. Okay, listen. Told your man for a murder, and you ain't got the evidence. Duh, evidence they prosecute, they treat him like a president. Man, in my city, it get wicked, no rush hour. Six child, they should have been free Curtis Flower. It's been two and a half months since the final episode of season two of In the Dark was released.

And a lot has happened since then. Not just in the case of Curtis Flowers, but also in the town of Winona, Mississippi. Curtis's lawyers have cited our reporting in court filings. Some people are considering filing bar complaints against the DA, Doug Evans. And some people are trying to spread the word about Curtis' case in new ways, like with this song. And so in this update, I'm going to tell you about all of it. I'm Madeline Barron, and this is a special update episode of In the Dark. I'm glad the world ain't so cold just like it used to be.

I'm speaking for the flower family nearby to my community. I'm sorry for the night family, everybody in my community. Two weeks ago, I went to talk to the man who wrote this song. His name is Franklin Forrest, but he raps under the name Daint Deasy. I've been going by that for years.

I'd actually met him before. I used to see him hanging out with his friends in Winona, under a tree in Curtis's sister's front yard. He told me that he listened to the podcast when it came out, and then he sat down and wrote the song. I think that it helped him out. Hopefully people can read up on you guys, they probably listen to the song and get a better understanding of that. It's like a way to reach

people about Curtis's case. He told me he wants to record a song in a studio in Memphis to try to get a lot more people to listen to it. But he hasn't been able to do that because he recently got a DUI charge. And now he's under house arrest. I've been back to Winona several times over the past few months. And among Black residents in town, it seemed like almost all anyone was talking about was Curtis Flowers and his case. What y'all doing again talking about all over the state of Mississippi, even in Indiana? They saying Curtis needs to be turned loose. Everybody I talked to, even on my job, I told them about it. The evidence, to me, it's not there.

How in the world can anybody anywhere convict anybody and put them on death row on circumstantial evidence? Don't have anything. No gun or no nothing. Odell has finally admitted to everything. I was like wow like how he just opened up you know still hate him but glad he did open up and talk to you guys

it would make me so mad that they keep trying him over and over and over again one woman in Winona named Tanaka Roberts had designed a t-shirt to support Curtis it has an acronym of the word fear spelled out on it. F-E-A-R.

So it's false evidence appearing real. That's what's on the t-shirt, and at the bottom it's like a hashtag, Free Curtis Flowers. This might not sound like much. Some t-shirts that say Free Curtis, a song written about his case. But this would have been unheard of just a year ago. There's never been a public protest for Curtis Flowers in Winona. No rallies, no yard signs, no letter-writing campaigns,

nothing. I wanted to know what Curtis made of our reporting, but I haven't been able to ask him myself because the prison still won't allow me to visit him. So on my first trip back to Winona, after the podcast came out in late June, I went with our producer Natalie to visit him. So on my first trip back to Winona, after the podcast came out in late June, I went with our producer Natalie to visit Curtis's parents, Lola and Archie Flowers. Thanks, good to see you. Yeah, good to see you too. Long time no see. I know, right? We sat down in their living room. Lola had just gotten up from a nap. The Flowers had listened to the podcast, but their son Curtis hadn't, because Curtis has no way of listening to it from prison. So instead, we'd been sending Curtis

transcripts of each episode. He get them every Tuesday. So what does he think? Oh, he excited about it. Yes, look. Curtis, it just got him all upbeat. He just really excited. It just got him all upbeat. He just, mm-hmm, really excited. Lola said Curtis had been getting letters, lots of letters,

from people who'd heard about his case and he wanted to let them know that they support him. Yeah, he said, Mom, I can't write all these people. I said, well, choose the ones you think you know you should write. You don't have to write everybody. No, everyone's not expecting you to write them a letter. How many letters are we talking about? I never ask him. He just say he has so much mail, he can't hardly read all of it. Lilla said Curtis told her that a lot of other people at Parchman Prison have also been following or reporting on the case. The guards and everything heard it,

and they all talking about it. What did they say? Telling, Curtis, you're going home soon. They all going to let you out. Among black residents of Winona, there was this feeling that something might change in Curtis' case, that he might get out of prison. But on the white side of town, it was different. One of the people I've kept up with is Jeffrey Armstrong. Jeffrey is the white man who told me he'd found a gun under a house just across the train tracks from Tardy Furniture, and that he'd given it to police because he thought it could be the murder weapon. And now that gun is missing. In late June, right before

the podcast had ended, I met up with Jeffrey in our usual spot, outside an engine repair shop in Winona. Jeffrey was always there, because the shop had burned down a few months before, and he was helping them rebuild. Jeffrey told me that white people had been coming up to him and saying all kinds of things. There's like a guy came here the other day, some older white guy, I have no idea who he was or nothing else. He was like, so you're going to run for governor now? I said, excuse me? He said, well, I figured all the black folks would run, elect you governor now. I was like, whatever. I just looked at him like, what's wrong with you people? I kept checking in with Jeffrey Armstrong over the summer, and during that time, Jeffrey's story of finding the gun ended up getting a lot more attention.

The largest newspaper in Mississippi, the Clarion-Ledger, put a big photo of Jeffrey on the front page, along with a story about the missing gun. And soon, the text I got from Jeffrey took on a different and more worrisome tone. the texts I got from Jeffrey took on a different and more worrisome tone. On my next trip to Wynonna in early September, I went by the repair shop with our reporter Parker to check in on Jeffrey. Only this time, he wasn't there. I'd been coming to the shop for months, and the other guys there had always been pretty friendly. But this time, most of the guys just ignored me. So I went inside the shop and I tried talking to the woman at the register. She told me that she hadn't seen Jeffrey in three weeks and that he'd moved, but she didn't know where, and that Jeffrey's mother had also moved,

and she didn't know where she'd gone either. It was as though the entire Armstrong family had just disappeared. I went back outside and tried to ask the guys Armstrong family had just disappeared. I went back outside and tried to ask the guys in the shop about it. A middle-aged white guy walked over and straight up told me that he thinks Jeffrey Armstrong is a liar. Y'all believe that crazy shit he's telling y'all? Y'all believe that crazy shit he's telling y'all, the man said? When I told him that the police captain had confirmed what Jeffrey had said, the man didn't seem to care. He told me, that shit's bogus as hell. Before he turned around to get back to work, he said,

If y'all find the man, just keep him when you find him. Keep him when you find him. It turned out Jeffrey Armstrong was in hiding. Hi, this is David Remnick. I'm proud to share the news that three films from the New Yorker documentary series have been shortlisted for the Academy Awards. And they are Incident, Seat 31, Zoe Zephyr, and Eternal Father. And they all immerse you in the finest cinematic journalism, exploring themes of justice, identity, and the bonds that shape us.

These extraordinary films, which were created by established filmmakers as well as emerging artists, will inform, challenge, and move you. I encourage you to watch them along with our full slate of documentary and narrative films at newyorker.com slash video. We left the repair shop in Winona, and eventually I reached Jeffrey Armstrong on his phone. He gave me his new address, and we headed over to see him. Good to see you.

How are you? Good. We were worried about you. Why did you decide to move? Because everybody knew where I lived, and I just didn't want to put my mother and wife in jeopardy. People come to the house for nothing. Had anyone come by so far before?

No. But you were worried that they could have? No. We won't tell anyone where you live. Thank you. Jeffrey told me that lately, white people in town have made it clear that he's no longer welcome. He said one person at a store even refused service to him. She just said, we don't have this. You need to go somewhere else.

I said, okay. Went to the bank and he was like, well, Jeffrey, we can't do this and we can't do that. Maybe you need to change banks. I was like, okay. And has this ever happened to you before? Has the bank ever said, go to another bank? Nope, never had a problem. I mean, I knew it was going to be, some people were going to react to it, but I didn't know it would be this bad. One day, Jeffrey said, he was shopping at a place in town when a white guy came up to him and mentioned that he'd seen Jeffrey had been in the paper.

He said, are you crazy? I said, no. Well, you know the Carroll County Mafia's coming to get you. So he said the Carroll County Mafia's coming to get you? Yeah. What's the Carroll County Mafia? I don't know what he was talking about. So did you report the threat to the cops?

No. I was like, what good is it going to do? It's going to be my word against theirs. You know, I thought after all these years and all the trials, maybe people would start to see things a little different. But, you know, they're dead set on everything Doug Evans has told them. They don't want to hear the truth or look at the evidence, none of that stuff. Doug Evans says he's guilty. He's guilty. So even though this stuff is coming out,

some people just won't change their minds. Or won't even be open to changing their mind. Right. And so it's like you have to be, like, what? Like, what do they think of you, do you think? I'm sure they think, what is wrong with this man? Trying to get this man out of prison after killing four people. I mean, I knew it was going to happen, but I just didn't expect it to get...

Like I said, I thought after the podcast and all this, people would start to say, maybe something is wrong. These people just... You know, ignorant. I don't mean ignorant about it. Ignorant means you don't know any better. And that's what they are. They're just ignorant to the fact.

It's like I tell my wife, when it's all said and done, the truth comes out. That's all that matters. As for Doug Evans, he remains the district attorney of the Fifth Circuit Court of Mississippi. Evans is up for re-election next year. So far, no one has announced plans to run against him. I haven't spoken to Doug Evans since the podcast came out. Evans hasn't returned my calls. But he did answer a few questions from a reporter at a newspaper in Greenwood, Mississippi, a few towns over. Evans told the Greenwood Commonwealth that he hasn't listened to the podcast, and that, quote, I don't intend to, because I know what this is about. He said, quote, if they wanted the truth, they'd be printing what happened in the trials and what the witnesses said. Evans also dismissed our analysis of his office's jury strikes.

In that analysis, we looked at more than 200 trials that Doug Evans' office had prosecuted during Evans' 26-year tenure as DA, every trial where we were able to find data on the race of jurors. And we found that in those trials, Doug Evans' office struck Black people from juries at a rate four and a half times that of white people. Doug Evans told the paper, quote, I don't know where that figure comes from. I've had many trials where no Black jurors were struck. I think these folks are just coming up with anything they can to discredit the case. A lot of people have asked me if Doug Evans has faced any sanctions since the podcast came out, like whether Doug Evans has been sanctioned by the Mississippi Bar Association. The answer to that is no. But several people have told us that they've called

the Mississippi Bar to find out more about how they could file a complaint against Doug Evans. I wanted to know more about what might happen with those complaints, so I went to see the man who would be in charge of investigating them. His name is Adam Kilgore, and he's the general counsel for the Mississippi Bar. He said people definitely have been talking about the findings from our reporting. I've got a neighbor who's listening to your podcast who's very excited, and he looks at me on an almost daily basis and says, I'm glad you're the guy over there doing this. I trust that you're going to do it.

And I said, you don't know what I'm going to do or not. It depends on, you know, bar complaint process and what happens. So, you know, we're asking the public to trust us and trust the process. Kilgore wouldn't comment on Doug Evans, but he told me, it's hard to say what would happen in an investigation of a prosecutor, partly because almost no one files complaints against prosecutors. So it's just not something

the bar is used to dealing with. I wanted to ask Kilgore about one very specific kind of misconduct by a prosecutor, striking Black people from juries because of their race, the kind of misconduct that the Mississippi Supreme Court had found Doug Evans had engaged in in one of Curtis's trials. The court has said it's a violation of the U.S. Constitution to strike people from a jury because of their race. It's so serious that Curtis Flowers' conviction in one of the trials was overturned because of it. But I wanted to know whether the Mississippi Bar Association

would consider it to be an ethics violation, something it would discipline a lawyer for. Well, you win the award for this week. This is being recorded on a Friday. It is routine for us at the end of the day on Friday to get a question we've never been asked before. And I have never been asked the question that you've asked me today. So, you know, the good news is I've got myself and three other attorneys, and I've got a committee of seven. No one person can do anything about these complaints either direction. So we would look at it and take it seriously. No action is taken by my office without oversight from the committee.

So the answer is we don't know because it's never come up as far as we know. Not to my knowledge, but I can't recall one. If you had a lawyer who, speaking hypothetically, never allowed a single black person to be on a jury ever like would the bar look at that like if that was a complaint i'm going to frustrate you and i'm not trying to that you know the bar is going to look at anything that is presented before them to see if it articulates a possible ethics violation. And if it does, we're going to process it and have it go forward unless there's some reason we can't do it at that time. I appreciate your question.

I just can't answer it at the level of specificity that you understandably want. A lot of people have asked me what's been happening in Curtis Flowers' case, and I do have some updates on that. But to make sense of them, I first want to take a minute or two to remind you of the status of his appeal. The last time Curtis was convicted, in the sixth trial in 2010, his lawyers appealed. That appeal is called a direct appeal. It's based for the most part on things that happened at trial. it's based for the most part on things that happened at trial. That appeal is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court,

but the court hasn't decided yet whether it will hear the case. If it does, it could decide to reverse Curtis's conviction, which would mean that the DA, Doug Evans, would get to decide whether to try the case for a seventh time. But Curtis has another option to get his conviction overturned. And this other option is used a lot by people who say they've been wrongfully convicted. It's called a post-conviction petition. The reason it's so important is that in a post-conviction, the defense can bring up evidence that wasn't known at the time of the trial.

Curtis had actually already filed his post-conviction in 2016, before we started reporting on the case. But the court had put the petition on hold, while Curtis's other appeal made its way through the courts. Now Curtis's lawyers want to move forward, and they're asking the court to allow them to add new information to the petition, including some of the findings from our reporting. Like the fact that Odell Cookie Hallman told us he lied on the stand when he told the jurors that Curtis had confessed to him. As the state would admit, he was probably one of their most crucial non-expert fact witnesses.

And he didn't tell the truth. Tucker Carrington directs the Innocence Project in Mississippi. And he's one of Curtis's lawyers. He's working on the post-conviction. That's a critical development, no question about it. I think the state would have to admit as much because if you go back and look at the closing arguments, say, that Doug Evans made in the trials

where he relied on Odell Hallman's testimony, the fact that Odell Hallman has recanted it or said it was lies, I think, undermines the fundamental structure of the state's prosecution. Another finding that could be important for Curtis's case is what we learned about Willie James Hemphill, the man who was arrested and questioned in the days after the murders at Tardy Furniture. At trial, investigators said Hemphill was only questioned for a few minutes, and they were able to rule him out right away. But our reporting found that law enforcement had searched intensely for Hemphill in the days after the murders, and had even gone

to another state to try to find him. And when we found Hemphill, he told us that he had been a suspect in the case, and that he turned himself into the jail after finding out the cops were looking for him. He said investigators had questioned him at length and had even taken photos of his shoes. None of this was known to Curtis's lawyers, and that, Curtis's lawyer Tucker Carrington told me, was significant, because if Curtis's lawyers had known

about any of the information pointing to Hemphill, they could have decided whether to investigate it or whether to tell the jurors about it. If you lined up sort of the evidence against, quote unquote, against Hempel versus the evidence against Curtis Flowers, particularly in the early stages of the investigation, Mr. Hempel would have been a clear suspect and target. And I don't think the state has ever been candid about that. The state has been responding to the filings by Curtis's lawyers. There's been a fair amount of back and forth lately. And in these filings, the state has made it clear

that it's standing by its handling of the Curtis Flowers case. But now that the case is on appeal, it's not being handled by DA Doug Evans. It's being handled by the Mississippi Attorney General's Office. It's one of the most powerful agencies in the state of Mississippi. And it's run by an elected official, the Attorney General, Jim Hood. Jim Hood used to be a district attorney in the district right next to Doug Evans. He was elected Attorney General 15 years ago, thanks in part to a tough-on-crime

message. With me, what you see is what you get. I've never been a defense attorney, never defended insurance companies or criminals. My dad was a prosecutor, and so am I. It's really pretty simple. I believe in the law, and I'm sworn to uphold it. Attorney General Jim Hood, protecting Mississippi families. Jim Hood told voters that not only did he support the death penalty, he thought that sometimes it wasn't carried out fast enough. Jim Hood is the only Democrat in Mississippi who holds a statewide office. And he's ambitious. He's considering running for governor next year.

One of the arguments the Attorney General has been making in court in the Curtis Flowers case is that some of our findings about the case are wrong, and therefore the court doesn't need to consider them. In particular, the Attorney General has focused in on Willie James Hemphill. We'd reported that Hemphill had been held in jail for 11 days, and that Hemphill had told us he was there because he turned himself in for questioning about the murders at Tardy Furniture. Hemphill told us that the cops had used some low-level charge, like maybe some unpaid fines, as a way to hold

him in jail while they questioned him. The Attorney General told the court that Hemphill had only been held in jail for two days, and not because of the Tardy murders. The reason, according to the Attorney General, was that a few weeks before the Tardy murders, Hemphill had gone to a gas station in Winona and stolen two cases of Budweiser. He then brought them back, but two cans were missing. So Hemphill ended up with a petty larceny charge, just a misdemeanor, not anything serious. In the filing, the attorney general told the court that the records from the Winona Police Department about this arrest, quote, completely eviscerate petitioner's assertions that Mr. Hemphill was an alternative suspect in this case. But the Attorney General's filing didn't explain why a team of law enforcement officers would comb the Mississippi Delta and even travel to another state

to try to apprehend a man for stealing some beer. And it wasn't clear why, if Hemphill really was just some petty criminal locked up in jail for a few days, investigators would want to question him about a quadruple murder. And the AG's filing didn't explain why the sheriff, the man who's responsible for the jail, had told us that Hemphill was in jail for 11 days, not two like the AG was claiming. The filing doesn't mention the sheriff at all. I wanted to ask Attorney General Jim Hood about this, but he declined my request for an interview. A spokesperson for the Attorney General's office told me in an email that, quote,

because this is a pending case, we cannot comment on it. Sorry about that. The last time I saw Curtis Flowers' mother, Lola, was in early July. But we didn't talk for long. Lola wasn't feeling well. You know, girl, I've been sick ever since yesterday. Oh, no. Got an upset stomach.

Sorry you're not feeling well. Oh, no. Got a upset stomach. Sorry you're not feeling well. Oh, Lord. Yesterday I was really bad. I'm a little better, but I'm going to the doctor in the morning. Well, good to see you both. Yeah, girl. We're glad to see you all, too. Yeah. See you soon, I hope.

Yeah, feel better. Two weeks later, I got a text from Curtis's sister. The text said that her mother, Lola Flowers, had died. Her death was sudden and unexpected. Her family told me that Lola had fallen ill and had gone to the hospital shortly after we left Winona and died of problems related to kidney failure. Lola Flowers never gave up hope that her son Curtis would be freed from prison. For the past 21 years, she talked on the phone with Curtis all the time, and she'd make the 80-mile trip each way every two weeks to visit him in Parchman Prison.

Once I asked her how she kept going, and she told me, there are a lot of people who say I'd have gone crazy. I say no. God's going to work this thing out. I do believe. It might not be when we want to, but he's going to work this thing out. I do believe. It might not be when we want to, but he's going to do it. Curtis is coming out. The funeral for Lola Flowers was held in Winona on a Saturday morning.

Friends and family packed into Mount Vernon Missionary Baptist Church. Some people came from as far away as Alabama, Texas, and Illinois. It was so many people that the church ran out of seats, and people had to stand in the back. More and more people arrived until the church was so full, it couldn't hold anyone else. One person who wasn't there was Lola's son, Curtis. Curtis wanted to be there.

He'd asked the court for permission to attend. But the DA, Doug Evans, opposed that request. The judge in charge of deciding whether to grant it was Judge Joey Loper, the same judge who had presided over two of Curtis's trials. Judge Loper never responded to Curtis's request. And so while the funeral went on, Curtis remained in his cell at Parchman Prison. Say amen. Amen.

Say amen again. Amen. Pastor Nelson Forrest got up to give the eulogy. Pastor Forrest is a close friend of the Flowers family, and he started out by talking about just how strong Lola Flowers was, how strong her faith was, and how she didn't abandon her faith when she saw her son go to prison for a crime he says he didn't commit. And I watched this situation, how it brought her closer to God.

A lot of us, it'll run us away from God. But it brought her even closer to God to where every time you seen her, when the verdict wasn't what we prayed for, she said, I'm still going to trust in the Lord. I ain't giving up on God because if God can't fix it, it ain't going to get fixed. If we could have fixed it, it would have already been fixed. As Pastor Forrest looked out on the congregation, on the hundreds of people who'd gathered, he had a message, and it wasn't about Lola.

It was about Curtis and about the criminal justice system in this small town. Pastor Forrest told the congregation that it was time to stop being afraid to stand up for Curtis Flowers in Winona, Mississippi. But if you do something for me, I want you to do one thing for me. Somebody going to ask you, did you go to Curtis Flowers' mama's funeral?

Then they're going to ask you why you went. I want you to be bold enough one time, amen, just one time, to tell them yeah, I went. Say yes, I went. Say why did you go? Say I wanted to be in the presence of a celebration

where they celebrated the life of a woman. That wasn't scared of nobody. They didn't give up on God. They didn't even look at her. Tell her I went to celebrate. Tell her I went to celebrate. Sick and tired of scared folks.

Jesus didn't die on the cross for you to be scared. He wasn't scared. What you scared of? You stand for what's right. So I don't think I'm going to ask you, what did you do? That's alright.

We done had a good celebration. Amen. Take somebody, FaceTime them, tell them, we done had a celebration. I was scared. I ain't supposed to be scared no more. All at once, Jesus lifted me. All at once, Jesus lifted me. Lola's husband, Archie Flowers, got up to sing.

All at once, I no longer could sing. Jesus lifted me. All at once, Jesus lift me One and one and one Curtis Flowers' father, Archie Flowers, continues to visit his son every two weeks at Parchman Prison. Are you going to visit him tomorrow? Yeah. Let's go to your home. What do you think you and Curtis will talk about?

Oh, that boy's going to tickle me to death. I know he did. Then we'll sing a song, you know. Say it, say it, say it. So it will be. All right. Good to see you. Y'all be good. All right. Hang in there. Y'all be good.

All right. Y'all take it easy, too. We will. That's it. Come back soon, are you? Mm-hmm. We can see you. All right.

Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! Sing Jesus, lift and lead. In the Dark is reported and produced by me, Madeline Barron, senior producer Samara Fremark, producer Natalie Jablonski, associate producer Raymond Tungakar, and reporters Parker Yesko and Will Kraft. Additional reporting by Curtis Gilbert.

Additional field recording for this episode by Alexandra Watts. For more on how complaints against prosecutors are handled, not just in Mississippi, but all across the country, go to our website, inthedarkpodcast.org. We've also posted a video of Dank Deasy performing a song about Curtis Flowers. In the Dark is edited by Catherine Winter. Web editors are Dave Mann and Andy Cruz.

The editor-in-chief of APM Reports is Chris Worthington. Original music by Gary Meister and Johnny Vince Evans. This episode was mixed by Corey Schreppel. I'm not a Robot, along with our full slate of documentary and narrative films at newyorker.com slash video.