Charlie Smith interviewed me for this article several weeks ago and has done a good job of representing my views.  My take is featured in the second half of the piece.  (More on the Friends of Justice perspective can be found on our website). Greenwood is thirty miles west of Winona and the Commonwealth has been following the Flowers case since four people were brutally murdered at a Winona furniture store in 1996.  Coverage from other Mississippi outlets has been sporadic.  In a state still stuggling with a painful Jim Crow heritage, the racial implications of the Flowers case are troubling.  I was in Mississippi again last week and discussed the story withy Jerry Mitchell, a reporter noted for his investigative work on civil rights era murders.  I think it is safe to say that Flowers 6 will get improved coverage.  In a case this flimsy, media scrutiny forces everyone, jurors included, to second-guess their easy assumptions about this case.

Sixth trial for Flowers in Winona quadruple homicide begins June 7

By CHARLIE SMITH

News Editor

Published: Saturday, May 15, 2010 7:50 PM CDT

WINONA — Fifty-four jurors have been convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Curtis Giovanni Flowers fired the shots that killed four people at a Winona furniture store in 1996.

The Mississippi Supreme Court has overturned 36 of those votes — three convictions — based on what it held to be prosecutorial errors and racial discrimination in jury selection.

Two other times at least one juror remained unconvinced of Flowers’ guilt, resulting in mistrials.

Starting June 7, 12 more registered voters of Montgomery County, selected from a pool of 600, will weigh Flowers’ fate.

The death penalty is on the table.

Until now it is believed that no person in American history has been tried six times on the same murder charges.

But this will be the sixth capital murder trial for Flowers, who turns 40 May 29.

His mother, Lola Flowers, has already sat through five trials and says it’s hard to think about experiencing another one. She said her son is handling the pressure all right.

“Praying and by the grace of God, he’s held on,” she said from her Winona home Friday.

A family member of one of the victims declined comment, and others could not be reached.

The newest twist in the case is Flowers’ April 15 transfer from the Carroll-Montgomery Regional Correctional Facility to the Leflore County Jail.

Carroll County Sheriff Jerry Carver said Flowers was moved because another witness in the case was being transferred to the jail in Vaiden, and the district attorney requested the witness and Flowers be kept separately.

During a pre-trial hearing on April 20, District Attorney Doug Evans said Flowers had “run of the Vaiden jail” and was allegedly involved in an intimate relationship with a female jail employee, according to reports by the Winona Times.

Carver said his office looked into those allegations, and the employee admitted to talking to and exchanging letters with Flowers but denied anything beyond that. She has resigned, Carver said.

Curtis Flowers is accused of the murders of Tardy Furniture store owner, Bertha Tardy, 59, and employees Carmen Rigby, 45, Robert Golden, 42, and Derrick “Bobo” Stewart, 16. All four victims were shot in the head on July 16, 1996, inside the downtown Winona business where Flowers had worked briefly.

Prosecutors hold that a motive for the killings was money Tardy withheld from Flowers’ paycheck for damaging some batteries on July 3. He had not returned to work after that incident.

The killings happened between 9 and 9:45 a.m. on July 16.

The murder weapon has never been found, but tests on shell casings and a projectile found at the murder scene matched it to a gun owned by Doyle Simpson, a relative of Flowers’, based on .38-caliber projectiles found in a post Simpson used for target practice. Simpon has testified the gun was stolen from his car on the morning of the murders.

A bloody footprint made by a size 10.5 Grant Hill Fila shoe was found inside the furniture store. A box for that pair of shoes in that size was found inside the home where Flowers lived with his girlfriend.

Witnesses reported seeing Flowers near the store on the morning of the killings.

On the surface, the prosecution’s case against Flowers seems reasonable, says Alan Bean, executive director of Friends of Justice, a Texas-based nonprofit that opposes inequalities in the courts.

But Bean — who has written extensively about the case on his website and visited Winona — believes holes appear when you dig deeper.

He said witnesses’ descriptions of Flowers on the day of the murders are wildly inconsistent and that a lot of people in Winona would have wished they had known something about the killings when they heard about a $30,000 reward.

“The eyewitness testimony is virtually meaningless in my eyes,” Bean said. “Now Doug Evans would disagree with that.”

Also, Bean said he doesn’t believe Flowers, who had no previous criminal record, would have committed such a brutal crime and that Simpson knows more than he is telling about how his gun went missing from his car.

When you add everything up, Bean said he believes it is extremely unlikely that Flowers committed the crimes.

“I’m convinced they’re barking up the wrong tree,” he said. “But Curtis Flowers can’t prove he’s innocent.”

Flowers, who has maintained his innocence throughout, says he was home alone when the slayings occurred, but no witnesses can verify that.

The story has gained some traction with generally liberal media outlets. (BBC Radio and “The International Socialist Review” have covered it recently.) They tend to see it as a sign of lingering unfairness toward blacks in the South.

Flowers is black, while three of the four victims were white. Flowers’ third conviction was thrown out by the state Supreme Court because it ruled Evans, who is white, was discriminating racially when he used all 15 of his juror strikes on blacks. The fourth jury split its vote for conviction 7-5 along racial lines.

Bean said the whole thing boils down to a gap in perception between blacks and whites in Winona.

In a general sense, he said, black people know the Flowers family has a reputation for being religious and question whether investigators ever considered another possibility other than that Flowers committed the crimes.

Whites, on the other hand, tend to trust that investigators made a fair inquiry into the case and would not use witnesses who lack credibility, he said.

The result is that without any conscious racial bias on either side, 12 random white Montgomery Countians would probably vote for a conviction after hearing all the evidence while a jury of blacks would come to the opposite conclusion, Bean said.

Hence the unprecedented stalemate, which has cost Montgomery County nearly $300,000 through five trials.

Bean said he came across an article from Indiana in 2004 claiming a case there held the record for most murder trials on the same charges for one person at five.

He figures Flowers’ case will set a new record when it begins in June. Bean said he’s asked many people he’s come across if they know differently and nobody has questioned his record-breaking claim.

After five trials, Bean said the real story becomes: What happens when the prosecution can’t get a conviction and the defense can’t get an acquittal?

“I think most people want to get beyond this,” Bean said. “They just don’t know how.”

•Contact Charlie Smith at csmith@gwcommonwealth.com.