Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony: The Curtis Flowers Case: How reliable is eyewitness evidence, and what can be done to safeguard against unreliable testimony? (Ann Njarara, Bree Peilen, Daniel Neuman, Emory Cook, Linda Lin, and Perrin Lowrey)
The Reliablility of Forensic Evidence: The Curtis Flowers Case: How reliable is expert analysis of forensic evidence? Read about a report on the reliability of some forms of forensic evidence including ballistics, shoeprints and gunshot residues.(Jiaxin Zhu, Liangcheng Yi, Wenqian Ma, Ziyue Zhu, and Guillem Esquius)
The Snitches that really need to get Stitches: Read more on the case of Curtis Flowers who awaits his appeal to the US Supreme Court for his death row conviction. The Flowers's case had initial key witnesses (jailhouse snitches) that had testified that Flowers had told them he committed the crimes while they were in jail with him. The jailhouse snitches received a reduction in their sentences in exchange for their testimony, however the snitches eventually said that they were lying.(Chris Pantuso, Vadim Belinskiy, Hayden Rutledge, Lucas Lonergan, and Albert Hughes III)
Race-Based Peremptory Challenges-Challenging the Challenge: Post-Batson cases have pushed prosecutors to come up with non-racial justifications to strike certain potential jurors from serving. Additionally, defense attorneys have been forced to rely on explicit evidence that demonstrates that even non-racial justifications can still be based on race. (Nathalie Greenfield, David Eichert, Nicholas Pulakos, and Oladoyin Olanrewaju)
Death-Qualified Juries and the Flowers Trials: The process of death qualification during voir dire is designed to produce a fair and impartial jury. However, social science research suggests that it instead produces a jury that is biased against a capital defendant. (Alice Chao, Ali Franz, Josh Howard, Molly Huffaker, Christina Lee, and Federico Wynter)
The Role of Social Science in Confession Evidence: Social science evidence has concluded that false confessions are highly prevalent and are among the leading causes of wrongful convictions. This webpage will provide an overview of the issue of confession evidence in our criminal justice system. It will specifically address these issues as they relate to Curtis Flowers, a Mississippi man who has been tried six times for a quadruple murder.The Flowers case raises issues such as the legal doctrines governing the use of confession evidence, what factors may drive a person to confess to a crime that they did not commit, and the different types of confessions as summarized by social scientists. Finally, we will propose a series of recommendations for preventing false confessions from becoming wrongful convictions.(Samantha Kennedy, Daisy Lee, Jackson Morrison, Destiny Reyes, and Christopher Vantrease)
Effects of the Racial Makeup of Juries: In part because of the prosecutor’s peremptory challenges, Curtis Flowers’s juries were either all-white or predominantly white. How is the racial composition of the jury associated with jury decision making?(Alicia Arman, Avery Cummings, Kezia Osunsade, Julian Ross, Starlin Shi)