On April 30, 2018, American Public Media’s true crime podcast In The Dark began airing its second season, an investigation of the case of Curtis Flowers, a black man in Mississippi accused of a quadruple homicide at a furniture store in 1996. The crime itself was extraordinary, but the case drew In The Dark’s attention because a local prosecutor had tried Flowers six times for the murders. Flowers was convicted and sentenced to death in the first three trials, but each time, the verdict was overturned on appeal — for prosecutorial misconduct in the first and second trials, and for racially discriminatory jury selection in the third. The fourth and fifth trials ended with hung juries. In the sixth, he was again convicted and sentenced to death, and his latest appeal was ongoing when the podcast started. Flowers has remained imprisoned the entire time, for more than 20 years.
In The Dark’s reporting on the case documented the inequities and outright barbarism of…
