The former head of the office for discipline of attorneys in Wisconsin has filed a complaint with the Mississippi Supreme Court stating retired prosecutor Doug Evans should face suspension from the practice of law for misconduct in the prosecution of Curtis Giovanni Flowers.
Flowers spent 23 in prison, most of it on death row, for crimes a court later determined he didn’t commit. Flowers was tried six times for the 1996 murders of four people in a furniture store in Winona.
Evans prosecuted all six trials against Flowers. None of the trials resulted in a legally valid conviction. Four of them resulted in capital murder convictions and death sentences, all of which were overturned because of Evans’ misconduct, including what the United States Supreme Court described as a “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals” throughout the course of the trials, according to a settled federal lawsuit filed on behalf of Flowers.
Gerald ”Jerry” Sternberg of Madison, Wisconsin, first filed a complaint with the Mississippi State Bar in 2021 against Evans but said in a complaint with the Mississippi Supreme Court last year the Bar never acted on his complaint.
Sternberg served almost 16 years as administrator of the Wisconsin Supreme Court Board of Attorneys Professional Responsibility. In that role, he said he prosecuted attorneys, including some prosecutors, for actions deemed less severe than Evans’ actions in the Flowers’ case.
Sternberg said in his complaint that Mississippi Bar’s Committee on Professional Responsibility has been utterly feckless in addressing serious misconduct by a prosecutor, citing unexcused delays and not being transparent. He said the only thing he heard from the Bar was when the case was on the agenda.
However, he said Bar officials indicated action would be deferred as long as a federal lawsuit filed by Flowers against Evans and others was pending. The federal lawsuit was settled in 2023. Also, Evans retired in 2023 after the settlement. He is retired but has been performing some private law practice in Grenada.
Despite retiring as district attorney, Evans should still face disciplinary action, according to Sternberg.
Evans, reached by phone March 3, said Sternberg doesn’t know him or anything about the case. He said Sternberg is only seeking publicity. Evans has repeatedly said he believed Flowers was guilty and he was doing his job as a prosecutor.
Sternberg said he became interested in the case after watching a broadcast by CBS “60 Minutes” news magazine about the Flowers’ case.
Sternberg said he was assured by the then-Bar’s general counsel, Adam Kilgore, that Evans’ retirement wouldn’t affect his ethics complaint. Kilgore retired from the Bar at the end of last year. Mississippi Today contacted Kilgore about Evans’ complaint. He referred our inquiry to current Bar General Counsel Melissa Scott.
Scott said Bar rules prohibit disciplinary agents and their staff from disclosing information relating to informal Bar complaints unless an accused attorney makes a public statement, or a formal complaint is filed with the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Sternberg said in Flowers’ first trial, on appeal, the court found Evans committed prosecutorial misconduct. In the second trial, the court found Evans committed prosecutorial misconduct by discriminating on the basis of race in striking a Black potential juror from consideration.
In Flowers’ third trial, his conviction was also overturned on appeal, citing Evans’ challenges in jury selection were racially motivated and thus unconstitutional. His four and fifth trials ended in hung juries.
In his sixth and final trial, on appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Evans violated the Batson decision, which prohibits discriminatory reasons in excluding potential jurors in a case.
When asked if she believes Evans should face disciplinary action, Cornell University Law Professor Sheri Lynn Johnson, who successfully argued Flowers’ appeal to the high court, said she would repeat what she told Supreme Court justices:
“The only plausible interpretation of all of the evidence viewed cumulatively is that Doug Evans began jury selection in Flowers VI with an unconstitutional end in mind, to seat as few African American jurors as he could.” Seven justices agreed. I am not a Mississippi lawyer, but I would hope that in every state deliberate violation of the Constitution would incur some professional cost,” Johnson said.
Sternberg said he believes the suspension of Evans’ license to practice law is appropriate to deter other prosecutors from engaging in similar misconduct and to send a clear message that his conduct in the past as district attorney is unacceptable.
District attorneys have tremendous power over people’s lives given their power to charge people with criminal activity, according to Sternberg. He said prosecutors have to exercise their power wisely. They are also supposed to fulfill the role of a minister of justice, not simply tallying up wins and losses, but rather, striking fair blows, he said.
“With these multiple acts of prosecutorial misconduct across at least four Curtis Flowers trials and Curtis Flowers serving more than 20 years in prison and death row, an analysis would be essential as to whether these acts of prosecutorial misconduct also were violations of the Mississippi Rules of Professional Conduct,” Sternberg wrote to state Supreme Court.
Hubbard T. Saunders, court administrator and counsel for the Mississippi Supreme Court, has acknowledged the court received Sternberg’s letters of complaint. Court officials, however, said there was no formal action before the court on Evans.
After the case was returned to the trial court for a potential seventh trial, Flowers was released on bail on Dec. 16, 2019. Evans then withdrew from the case in the face of a motion to recuse him. The Mississippi attorney general was appointed in his place.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch moved to dismiss the charges with prejudice – meaning they can’t be brought back up – after an independent review of the evidence. Flowers’ trial court judge granted that motion to dismiss the charges against Flowers in September 2020.
After the charges were dropped against Flowers, a court cleared him of any involvement in the crime and the state awarded him a total of $500,000, spread over 10 years, from the wrongly convicted fund.
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