This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/16/us/curtis-flowers-murder.html

The article has changed 2 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
After 6 Murder Trials and 23 Years, Curtis Flowers Is Granted Bail After 6 Murder Trials and 23 Years, Curtis Flowers Is Granted Bail
(about 7 hours later)
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. WINONA, Miss. — For more than two decades, Curtis Flowers has returned over and over again to a court in Mississippi to face prosecution for the brutal killings of four people in a small-town furniture store where he 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. In the first three trials, Mr. Flowers, a black man, was found guilty by nearly all-white juries. Each of those convictions was overturned by the State Supreme Court. In the fourth and fifth trials, juries failed to reach verdicts.
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. And in the sixth and most recent trial, Mr. Flowers was found guilty and sentenced to death. This time, his appeals ascended to the United States Supreme Court, and again the conviction was tossed.
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. On Monday, after chastising prosecutors for not resolving the case that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote was “likely one of a kind,” a judge granted Mr. Flowers bail, offering him the gift of freedom for the first time in 23 years.
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.” It was a long-awaited victory in a case that has attracted global attention, consumed much of Mr. Flowers’s adult life and tested the limits of his family’s hope.
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.) “Welcome home!” his daughter, Crystal Ghoston, said jubilantly outside the courthouse, imagining her reunion with her father. She was 3 years old at the time of his arrest and was raised by an aunt.
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. As he set bail at $250,000, Judge Joseph H. Loper Jr. warned prosecutors — who have neither decided whether to try the case for the seventh time nor responded to motions filed by defense lawyers — that if their inaction continued, “the state of Mississippi will reap the whirlwind.”
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. He also noted the absence of Doug Evans, the white district attorney who has tried the case six times. “I don’t know why he’s not here,” Judge Loper said. “I expected him to be here.”
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. Last month, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Mr. Evans, accusing him of racial discrimination through “a practice of striking black jurors with peremptory challenges at an extraordinary rate.” The lawsuit claims that Mr. Evans and his prosecutors, since 1992, have used peremptory strikes against black jurors 4.4 times more frequently than with white jurors.
The latest conviction against Mr. Flowers was thrown out after the United States Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Evans had violated Mr. Flowers’s constitutional rights by pushing to keep black jurors off the panels deciding his fate. (In the six trials for Mr. Flowers, 61 of the 72 jurors were white.)
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,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote, the state wanted to try Mr. Flowers “ideally before an all-white jury.”
The case attracted attention far beyond Mississippi. It fit into a broader conversation about the influence of race in the criminal justice system, with a white prosecutor accused of consistently keeping black jurors off panels deciding the fate of an African-American defendant in a capital murder case.
It also was 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.
“This case is unprecedented in the history of the American legal system,” Rob McDuff, a lawyer for Mr. Flowers, said as he laid out his arguments in court on Monday.
The quadruple murder and robbery of the Tardy Furniture store in July 1996 rattled Winona, a small town about a two-hour drive from Memphis. In the many years since, it continues to hold a tight grip on the community and its 5,000 residents.
On Monday, the courtroom was packed with relatives of both Mr. Flowers and the victims, along with many residents who had followed the case. (“I should have known it was going to be a social event,” one woman in the gallery leaned in to tell a friend.)
One of the victims was Bertha Tardy, the 59-year-old owner of the store and a prominent resident who wrote a regular column for The Winona Times. The other three who were killed were employees: Carmen Rigby, 45, who had worked at the store for two decades; Robert Golden, 42, who had a second job at the store in addition to a full-time job to support his family; and Derrick Stewart, 16, who had been hired part time for his first job.
At his six trials, prosecutors described Mr. Flowers, now 49, as a disgruntled former employee who was angry because he had been fired. He was arrested several months after the slayings.
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. (The podcast won a George Polk award, a prestigious journalism prize, for its work about the case.)
In court on Monday, Mr. McDuff played a recording of an interview with Odell Hallmon, a witness who later recanted his testimony that Mr. Flowers had confessed to the murders. “Everything was all make-believe,” Mr. Hallmon said in the interview.
Mr. McDuff said that Mr. Hallmon caught breaks from prosecutors, with cases apparently dropped and lighter punishments, after cooperating with them.
“We don’t have to prove he is innocent today,” Mr. McDuff said of Mr. Flowers. “Though, I think we can if we had a trial.”
The prosecution countered that the change in Mr. Hallmon’s testimony, and the testimony of other witnesses who have since recanted, did not entirely undercut its case.
“There is more proof than just these people’s statements,” William Adam Hopper, an assistant district attorney, told the judge, adding that investigators had found gunpowder residue on Mr. Flowers’s hands and cash at his home. Cash was missing from the furniture store.
He also had a motivation to carry out the shooting, Mr. Hopper said. “He had been let go, his check docked,” he said, adding that Mr. Flowers “was the only suspect.”
But someone else might also have been under suspicion, said Judge Loper, who noted that prosecutors now face tougher prospects if they decide to try the case again.
The case, Judge Loper said, has become “wholly a circumstantial evidence case that places a higher burden on the prosecution.”
Relatives of the victims and their supporters declined to talk to a reporter on Monday, beyond expressing disappointment. “They let us down, didn’t they?” one man said.
In contrast, some of Mr. Flowers’s relatives began crying or simply stood still, in shock. “It’s been awhile,” his father, Archie Flowers, said just after the hearing.
“Excuse me,” he added as he walked away from reporters. “I’m about to cry.”
Family and friends acknowledged that the case was not over. If prosecuted for a seventh time — and found guilty a fifth time — Mr. Flowers could return to prison.
But on Monday, with an anonymous donor posting Mr. Flowers’s bail, they chose to savor the moment they had feared would never come.
“Thank you, Jesus!” said Monkra Small, who helped raise Mr. Flowers’s daughter while her father was incarcerated.
“It hasn’t been fair from Day 1,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “But I’m so happy. I have so much joy in my soul.”