WINONA, Miss. — For more than two decades, Curtis Flowers has returned to court in Mississippi over and over again to face prosecution for the same crimes, the killing of four people in a small-town furniture store where he had once worked.
The first three convictions were overturned by the state Supreme Court. In the fourth and fifth trials, juries failed to reach verdicts. In the sixth and most recent trial, Mr. Flowers was found guilty and sentenced to death. But the conviction was tossed yet again after his appeals ascended to the United States Supreme Court.
On Monday, a judge granted Mr. Flowers bail, offering him a taste of freedom for the first time in 23 years as he waits on prosecutors to decide whether to try the case for a seventh time. The judge set the bail at $250,000. Mr. Flowers’s lawyers said an anonymous donor was covering the percentage required for his release.
The case has attracted widespread attention, serving as the season-long focus of a podcast that chipped away at key elements of the prosecution’s arguments and was cited by Mr. Flowers’s lawyers in court.
The case came to be defined by the actions of prosecutors, as courts found that they had mishandled it and as they continued to repeatedly bring it to trial. In a Supreme Court opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the case was “likely one of a kind.”
The Supreme Court found that Doug Evans, the lead prosecutor, had violated Mr. Flowers’s constitutional rights through a concerted effort to keep black jurors off the panels deciding his fate. (Mr. Flowers is black.)
In the majority opinion, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote, “Equal justice under law requires a criminal trial free of racial discrimination in the jury selection process.” By pursuing a “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals,” the state wanted to try Mr. Flowers “ideally before an all-white jury,” he wrote.
Mr. Flowers was arrested several months after four people were killed in a shooting on July 16, 1996, at a furniture store in downtown Winona, Miss., a town of roughly 5,000 people about a 90-minute drive south of Memphis.
Prosecutors described Mr. Flowers as a former employee who had been disgruntled after being fired. The prosecution relied on shoe prints taken from the scene, as well as testimony that was later undermined by the reporting for the podcast, “In the Dark,” which was produced by American Public Media.
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December 17, 2019 at 02:28AM
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After 6 Murder Trials and 23 Years, Curtis Flowers Is Granted Bail - The New York Times
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