Flowers v. Mississippi

Whether a prosecutor's history of adjudicated purposeful race discrimination may be dismissed as irrelevant when assessing the credibility of his proffered explanations for peremptory strikes against minority prospective jurors?

Petitioner was tried six times for the same offense in Mississippi. During the first trial, the prosecution peremptorily removed all African Americans from seats on the jury. In the second, a judge blocked the prosecutor from striking another potential juror, finding it racially motivated. After six trials, Petitioner was sentenced to death.  Petitioner filed multiple appeals, and in 2016 the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine whether a prosecutor’s history of racially selecting jurors should be considered when assessing the credibility of the prosecutor’s explanations regarding peremptory strikes against jurors of a minority race. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case back to the Supreme Court of Mississippi, which dismissed evidence of the prosecutor’s juror selection practices as “irrelevant” and affirmed Petitioner’s conviction. The Supreme Court again granted certiorari to determine whether a court is permitted to dismiss a prosecutor’s history of selecting jurors based on race. Petitioner argues that the prosecutor’s jury selection process violated Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), which held that peremptory strikes solely on the basis of race are a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Petitioner asserts that the prosecutor’s practice of dismissing qualified African Americans from the jury line-up must be considered when assessing the prosecutor’s explanations regarding his peremptory strikes and that the State Supreme Court’s dismissal of the prosecutor’s prior history was outcome determinative.