Freed from prison, Mississippi man sues district attorney

3 years ago 295

JACKSON, Miss. – A Mississippi antheral freed aft astir 23 years successful situation filed a suit Friday against the territory lawyer who prosecuted him six times successful the killings of 4 radical astatine a small-town furnishings store.

Curtis Flowers was released successful December 2019, astir six months aft the U.S. Supreme Court tossed retired the condemnation and decease condemnation from his sixth trial, which took spot successful 2010. Justices said prosecutors showed an unconstitutional signifier of excluding African American jurors successful the trials of Flowers, who is Black.

The suit filed Friday besides names arsenic defendants 3 investigators who worked with Montgomery County District Attorney Doug Evans. The region is not named arsenic a defendant.

The suit says Evans and the investigators engaged successful misconduct, including “pressuring witnesses to fabricate claims astir seeing Mr. Flowers successful peculiar locations connected the time of the murders" and ignoring different imaginable suspects.

The Associated Press near a telephone connection for Evans successful his bureau Friday seeking a effect to the lawsuit. The telephone was not instantly returned.

The suit does not accidental however overmuch wealth Flowers is seeking, leaving that determination to a jury.

“Curtis Flowers ne'er should person been charged,” 1 of his attorneys, Rob McDuff of the Mississippi Center for Justice, said successful a quality merchandise Friday.

McDuff said the killings “were intelligibly the enactment of nonrecreational criminals" and Flowers, who was 26 astatine the time, had nary transgression record.

“The prosecution was tainted passim by radical favoritism and repeated misconduct," McDuff said. “This suit seeks accountability for that misconduct.”

In March, a justice ordered the authorities of Mississippi to pay Flowers $500,000 for wrongful imprisonment — the maximum nether a authorities instrumentality that allows up to $50,000 a a twelvemonth for 10 years. The did not preclude Flowers from suing the territory lawyer and investigators, his attorneys said.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said successful September 2020 that Flowers would not beryllium tried a seventh time due to the fact that prosecutors nary longer had credible witnesses and grounds was excessively anemic for different trial. Fitch took bureau successful January 2020 and took power of the lawsuit aft Evans stepped distant from it.

Four radical were changeable connected July 16, 1996, successful the Tardy Furniture store successful Winona. They were proprietor Bertha Tardy, 59, and 3 employees: 45-year-old Carmen Rigby, 42-year-old Robert Golden and 16-year-old Derrick “Bobo” Stewart. Tardy, Rigby and Golden died astatine the scene, and Stewart died astir a week later.

Relatives of immoderate of the victims person maintained their content that Flowers is the killer. Attorneys for Flowers accidental helium is innocent.

Flowers was convicted 4 times successful the slayings: doubly for idiosyncratic slayings and doubly for each 4 killings. Two different trials involving each 4 deaths ended successful mistrials. Each of his convictions was overturned.

The 2019 Supreme Court ruling came aft American Public Media’s “In the Dark” investigated the case. The podcast recorded jailhouse informant Odell Hallmon successful 2017 and 2018 recanting his grounds that Flowers had confessed to him. Hallmon’s communicative of the confession had been cardinal grounds successful aboriginal trials, but helium told the podcast connected a contraband cellphone from down bars that his communicative was “a clump of fantasies, a clump of lying.”

The podcast besides presented an investigation uncovering a agelong past of radical bias successful assemblage enactment by Evans, and recovered grounds suggesting different antheral whitethorn person committed the crimes.

After the June 2019 Supreme Court ruling, Flowers was moved disconnected decease enactment astatine the Mississippi State Penitentiary astatine Parchman and taken to a determination jail. He remained successful custody due to the fact that the archetypal execution indictment was inactive active, and a justice released him connected bail that December.

Winona sits adjacent the crossroads of Interstate 55, the large north-south artery successful Mississippi, and U.S. Highway 82, which runs eastbound to west. It is astir a half-hour’s thrust from the flatlands of the Mississippi Delta. Among its 4,300 residents, astir 54% are Black and 41% are white.

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Follow Emily Wagster Pettus connected Twitter astatine http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus.

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