7th trial ruled out in 4 Mississippi deaths

JACKSON, Miss. — A Mississippi man freed last year after 22 years in prison will not be tried a seventh time in a quadruple-slaying case, his defense attorney said Friday.

Curtis Flowers was released from state custody on Dec. 16.

Attorney General Lynn Fitch and her staff spent months reviewing the case after it was transferred to her in January by District Attorney Doug Evans, who had handled Flowers’ previous prosecutions. Evans excused himself from the case when Fitch took office.

Flowers’ attorney, Rob McDuff, said on Friday that Fitch had decided not to prosecute Flowers again.

Flowers was convicted four times in the 1996 killings of four people at a furniture store in Winona: twice for individual slayings and twice for all four killings. Two other trials involving all four deaths ended in mistrials.

Each of Flowers’ convictions was overturned. In June 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out the conviction and death sentence from Flowers’ sixth trial, which place in 2010. Justices said prosecutors showed an unconstitutional pattern of excluding Black jurors in the trials of Flowers, who is Black.

After that ruling, Flowers was moved off death row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman and taken to a regional jail in Louisville. He remained in custody because the original murder indictment was still active.

At the request of Flowers’ attorneys, a judge set bail at $250,000 on Dec. 16, and Flowers was released.