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Thread: Curtis Giovanni Flowers - Mississippi

  1. #41
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Curtis Flowers, man freed after wrongful imprisonment, marries in Mississippi

    A Mississippi man who was wrongfully imprisoned for more than two decades and spent years on death row has wed his fiancée, a little more than a year after being freed.

    Curtis Flowers married Marlena Wright on Saturday during a private ceremony in Grenada, WTVA-TV reported.

    Flowers, a Black man, was released from prison in December 2019, months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Black jurors were excluded from his trials in a 1996 quadruple murder at a Winona furniture store. He was tried six times in total.

    A post on a website announcing the couple's marriage said the two were looking forward to starting their life together following Flowers' release.

    “In cheerleading for Curtis, as we all have, God allowed us to meet after freedom came Curtis’ way,” WTVA quoted the post as saying. “Curtis said to me, ‘I’ve been waiting for you. You will be my future.’ The rest is history.”

    Flowers was convicted twice for individual slayings and twice for all four killings. Two other trials ended in mistrials. Each of his convictions were later overturned, including his death sentence.

    Earlier this month, a judge ordered the state to pay $500,000 to Flowers.

    https://www.clarionledger.com/story/...pi/4802854001/
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  2. #42
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Death-Row Exoneree Curtis Flowers Sues Mississippi Prosecutor Who Prosecuted Him 6 Times

    Former Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Flowers, who was exonerated in 2020 is suing the officials whose misconduct led to his arrest and repeated wrongful conviction. Flowers was tried 6 times and spent 23 years wrongfully incarcerated for a quadruple murder in a white-owned furniture store in Winona, Mississippi. In a complaint filed September 3, 2021 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, Flowers alleges that his trial prosecutor, an investigator in the prosecutor’s office, and 2 police officers involved in the investigation engaged in pervasive misconduct that violated his Fourth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights, as well as the Mississippi Constitution and several Mississippi state laws.

    Flowers suit names as defendants Fifth Circuit Court District Attorney Doug Evans, who personally prosecuted Flowers six times; John Johnson, a former investigator for Evans’ office; and Jack Matthews and Wayne Miller, two Mississippi Highway Patrol officers involved in his case. The suit asserts that the case against Flowers “never made sense” and that lacking “any solid evidence against Mr. Flowers, Defendants engaged in repeated misconduct to fabricate a case that never should have been brought.”

    Over the course of two decades and six trials, Evans systematically removed Black prospective jurors from Flowers’ case, repeatedly trying Flowers, who is Black, before all-white or nearly all-white juries. Flowers was convicted and sentenced to death four times, but each conviction was overturned because of misconduct by Evans. Two of Flowers’ trials ended in hung juries, with every white juror voting to convict and every Black juror voting to acquit. An investigation by APM Reports found that Evans’ office excluded African Americans at nearly 4.5 times the rate at which they removed white jurors.

    Just before Flowers’ second trial, his parents’ house burned down and his mother was told of a threat made by a white resident that, “If they let that n——- go, another house is going to burn.” Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Flowers’ conviction in his sixth trial based on Evans’ race discrimination in jury selection, the Mississippi Attorney General’s office took over the case from Evans, and charges were dismissed.

    “Curtis Flowers can never get back the 23 years of his life that he spent in prison when he should have been home with his family and friends,” Kaitlyn Golden, one of the attorneys representing Flowers, said in a statement. “The law allows innocent people to file lawsuits seeking to hold state officials accountable for misconduct leading to wrongful imprisonment. With this case, we hope to do just that, and to seek some redress for Curtis Flowers for the horrors he endured over more than 2 decades behind bars.”

    From the outset, Flowers was an unlikely suspect. The crime was complex and the evidence indicated that the perpetrator had firearms proficiency and likely a criminal background. Flowers had no criminal record, no firearms experience, and no plausible motive. He was questioned and eventually arrested simply because had once spent three and a half days working at the furniture store where the crime took place.

    The lawsuit alleges that investigators committed extensive misconduct in building a case against Flowers, including “pressuring witnesses to fabricate claims about seeing Mr. Flowers in particular locations on the day of the murders, using an unduly suggestive photo line-up to persuade one witness to incriminate Mr. Flowers, failing to thoroughly investigate other suspects who were much more likely to have committed these murders than Curtis Flowers (and concealing the investigation that was done), failing to send a firearm that may have been the murder weapon to the Mississippi crime lab for further investigation, and persuading a career criminal to claim falsely that Mr. Flowers confessed in prison.”

    As Flowers’ appeals moved forward, APM Reports’ In the Dark podcast uncovered evidence of his innocence, including facts pointing to another suspect and a taped admission from the state’s star witness, jailhouse informant Odell Hallmon, that he had lied when he testified that Flowers had confessed to the murders. “Despite Doug Evans’ constant claim over the years that there were no suspects other than Curtis Flowers,” the lawsuit says, “there were multiple alternative suspects, including people with histories of violence, murder, and commercial burglaries.”

    In June 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated Flowers’ conviction in his sixth trial, finding that Evans’ “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals strongly suggests that the State wanted to try Flowers before a jury with as few black jurors as possible, and ideally before an all-white jury.” After Evans indicated he intended to try Flowers a seventh time, two civil rights firms sought an injunction to bar his office from engaging in discriminatory jury selection. Flowers’ lawyers also moved to recuse

    Evans from the case, leading him to voluntarily withdraw and turn the case over to Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch. In September 2020, Fitch dropped charges against Flowers, writing, “based on the totality of circumstances, it is in the interest of justice that the State will not seek an unprecedented seventh trial of Mr. Flowers.”

    (source: Death Penalty Information Center)
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  3. #43
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Court doors closed to NAACP suit over Black juror denials

    A federal appeals court has found that the NAACP has no standing to sue a Mississippi prosecutor accused of routinely rejecting Black jurors in criminal cases.

    District Attorney Doug Evans has been in office since 1992, and his jury selection tactics have been scrutinized for years. His exclusion of Black jurors in one high-profile murder case caused the Supreme Court to overturn the conviction of Curtis Flowers in June 2019, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh citing a "relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals."

    The Attala County branch of the NAACP and 4 Black voters sued Evans months later, asking the courts to declare that the prosecutor's jury selection practices violate the constitutional rights of prospective jurors such as themselves. They also requested an injunction to prevent Evans and his staff from making race-based jury strikes.

    U.S. District Judge Debra Brown acknowledged the plaintiffs' claims against Evans may have merit, but she dismissed their case in September 2020, saying an injunction would put the federal court in the improper role of conducting an "ongoing audit" of current and future state court proceedings. She also said those who suspect a prosecutor of race-based jury exclusions can make challenges in state courts.

    The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision in its ruling Thursday. The 3-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the lawsuit because they "have not demonstrated a 'real and immediate threat' or a 'substantial risk"' that
    Evans could strike them from jury service because of their race.

    The appeals panel noted that only one of the plaintiffs had ever been called for potential jury duty, and was dismissed after saying she could not support the death penalty in one of Flowers' trials - a permissible reason to exclude someone from a jury.

    In a dissent, Judge Gregg Costa wrote that the percentage of Americans who show up for jury duty is "staggeringly low," but that the people who sued Evans represent a "refreshing departure" by being willing to serve.

    "And these Americans seeking to perform their civic duty are just as likely - and actually more likely - to be called for jury duty in the near future than plaintiffs in other cases we have allowed prospective jurors to pursue," Costa wrote.

    The Associated Press left a phone message Friday for Evans at his office in Grenada, Mississippi, seeking his response. Evans, whose office covers seven counties in northern Mississippi, is 1 of 6 candidates running in a nonpartisan election in November for a state circuit judgeship.

    Flowers was tried 6 times in the 1996 shooting deaths of 4 people at a furniture store in Winona, with 4 convictions and 2 mistrials. He has always maintained his innocence. Flowers remained in prison for 6 months after the Supreme Court overturned his final conviction because he was still under indictment, and he was released in December 2019 after a judge set bond. Mississippi dropped charges against Flowers in September 2020, months after Evans turned the case over to the state attorney general's office.

    The Supreme Court ruling that led to Flowers' freedom came after American Public Media's "In the Dark" investigated the case. The podcast recorded jailhouse informant Odell Hallmon in 2017 and 2018 recanting his testimony that Flowers had confessed to him.

    It also presented an analysis finding a long history of racial bias in jury selection by Evans.

    Flowers filed his own lawsuit against Evans and 3 investigators in September 2021, seeking unspecified damages. Flowers' suit is still pending. It says Evans and the investigators engaged in misconduct, including pressuring witnesses to fabricate claims against Flowers.

    In March 2021, a judge ordered Mississippi to pay Flowers $500,000 for wrongful imprisonment - the maximum under a state law that limits such payments to $50,000 a year for 10 years.

    (source: Associated Press)
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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