Supreme Court set for case on racial bias in jury selection
Legal Outlook
Curtis Flowers has been jailed in Mississippi for 22 years, even as prosecutors couldn't get a murder conviction against him to stick through five trials.
Three convictions were tossed out, and two other juries couldn't reach unanimous verdicts.
This week, the Supreme Court will consider whether his conviction and death sentence in a sixth trial should stand or be overturned for a familiar reason: because prosecutors improperly kept African-Americans off the jury.
The justices on Wednesday will examine whether District Attorney Doug Evans' history of excluding black jurors should figure in determining if Evans again crossed a line when he struck five African-Americans from the jury that most recently convicted Flowers of killing four people.
In overturning Flowers' third conviction, the Mississippi Supreme Court called Evans' exclusion of 15 black prospective jurors "as strong a prima facie case of racial discrimination as we have seen" in challenges to jury composition. This time around, though, the state's high court has twice rejected Flowers' claims, even after being ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court to take another look.
Related listings
-
Wisconsin court: Judge's Facebook friendship could show bias
Legal Outlook 02/16/2019A Wisconsin judge's decision to become Facebook friends with a woman whose child custody case he was hearing created at least the appearance of bias, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday in ordering the case to be re-heard by another judge.The case,...
-
Family's fight for liquor license leads to Supreme Court
Legal Outlook 01/15/2019Doug and Mary Ketchum chose Memphis, Tennessee, as a place to live with their disabled adult daughter because it has clearer air than their former home in Utah.That was the easy part. Their decision to support themselves by buying a liquor store has ...
-
Trump Foundation lawsuit paused until higher court weighs in
Legal Outlook 10/23/2018A New York judge on Thursday mothballed a lawsuit over President Donald Trump's charitable foundation until a higher court rules in an unrelated case whether a sitting president can be sued in state court.State Supreme Court Justice Saliann Scarpulla...
Chicago Business Fraud Attorney
Business Fraud can take many forms. In the broadest terms, a fraud occurs when someone intentionally deceives others for personal gain. Many times business fraud is harmful and recovery is necessary. Losing your personal or business’s assets can devastate your entire life. Contact Roth Law Groupto receive help on restoring your business to normalcy before you were victimized with fraud. Business fraud cases can involve multiple people and complicated schemes aimed at deceiving the public, auditors, investigators, or others. Whether you are dealing with corporate fraud or commercial fraud, we can step in and fight back to receive compensation that you deserve.
At Roth Law Group we are devoted to prosecuting and defending the legal rights of individuals and small businesses, as either plaintiff or defendant. Proving fraud can be extremely difficult. To have a successful business fraud case, one must prove that the defendant purposefully set out to defraud the victim. Fraud cases are being investigated more aggressively than ever. With increasing federal regulation and scrutiny of corporate practises, many individuals and businesses find themselves the subject of business fraud investigations.