18 Facts About Curtis Flowers

Curtis Flowers was first convicted in 1997; in five of the six trials, the prosecutor, Montgomery County District Attorney Doug Evans, sought the death penalty against Curtis Flowers.

Curtis Flowers's case was one of three that the US Supreme Court ruled in June 2016 were to be remanded to lower courts to be reviewed for evidence of racial bias in jury selection.

In December 2019, Curtis Flowers was released from prison for the first time since his original arrest, on $250,000 bond, pending a state decision on whether it would attempt another prosecution.

The Curtis Flowers case served as the subject of a 2018 podcast, In the Dark, on American Public Media.

Curtis Flowers was suspected after police learned that he had been fired from the store 13 days prior to the murders.

Curtis Flowers owed Bertha Tardy $30 for a cash advance on his paycheck.

Curtis Flowers was charged with murder in the shooting deaths of the four victims.

Curtis Flowers was released on bail to await the state's next decision.

Curtis Flowers maintained that he was innocent of the murders and said he never admitted any crimes to his cellmates.

Curtis Flowers stated he had simply stopped going to the job and did not know he had been fired.

Curtis Flowers said he was wearing Nike shoes that day, the clothes he was wearing did not match the description given by eyewitnesses, and the particulate matter on his hands was due to his having handled fireworks the day before the murders.

An appeal by Curtis Flowers failed, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruling in 2014 that the conviction was to be upheld.

In 2018, the second season of the American Public Media podcast In the Dark was based on reporting about the Curtis Flowers case, hosted and reported by journalist Madeleine Baran.

Amicus briefs on behalf of Curtis Flowers were filed by the Magnolia Bar Association, the Mississippi Center for Justice, and Innocence Project New Orleans.

Curtis Flowers continued to be held at Parchman, then at the Grenada County, Mississippi, jail, and the Winston-Chickasaw Regional Correctional Facility, in Louisville, Mississippi, pending decisions from prosecutors and the local court on any future prosecution.

Curtis Flowers's attorneys petitioned for the charges to be dismissed, or failing that, for bail to be granted and for Doug Evans to be removed from any role in the prosecution, citing the multiple findings of prosecutorial misconduct in the case.

Curtis Flowers was restricted to his residence, and required to wear an ankle monitor.

District Attorney Evans, prosecutor in all six of Curtis Flowers's trials, recused himself from the case in January 2020 and asked the presiding judge to turn over prosecution to the Mississippi Attorney General's office.