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<\/p>\nJACKSON, Miss. \u2013 Curtis Flowers, who was wrongfully incarcerated for 23 years, will receive the state’s maximum compensation of $500,000, Mississippi 5th Circuit Judge George Mitchell\u00a0judge ruled Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The 50-year-old spent nearly half his life on death row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman for the 1996 shooting deaths of four people at Tardy\u00a0Furniture Store in Winona where Flowers had been employed until roughly two weeks before the murders.<\/p>\n
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Curtis Flowers, 50, holds up his dissembled ankle monitor after Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch dropped the case against him on Friday, Sept. 5, 2020. Flowers had been tried six times for the same crime, the murder of four people at a furniture store in Winona, by white prosecutor Doug Evans. Flowers' last conviction was overturned because the U.S. Supreme Court found that Evans had racially discriminated during jury selection. (Photo: Special to the Clarion Ledger)<\/span><\/p>\n The victims, including\u00a0store owner Bertha Tardy, 59, and employees, Robert Golden, 42, Carmen Rigby, 45, and Derrick Stewart, 16, had been shot in the head.<\/p>\n There was very little evidence to go on and no clear motive emerged during the investigation. Some experts indicated there was evidence of\u00a0more than one person involved in the crime, yet Flowers was the only person ever charged.<\/p>\n State law allows a person who was wrongfully convicted of a crime to be compensated $50,000 a year for every year incarcerated, with a cap at $500,000. The\u00a0funds will be distributed at $50,000 annually for the next 10 years.<\/p>\n Previously: <\/strong>Curtis Flowers was tried 6 times for same crime and wrongly imprisoned for more than 20 years. Here’s what he’s saying now.<\/span><\/p>\n Flowers was convicted and sentenced to death for the first time in 1997. Former District Attorney Doug Evans prosecuted that trial and an unprecedented five more trials.\u00a0<\/p>\n Flowers’ first three trials ended in convictions, which were overturned by the state Supreme Court for prosecutorial misconduct. The fourth and fifth trials ended in mistrials. Flowers was convicted again in 2010 at his sixth trial. That conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019.<\/p>\n In November 2019, Evans was\u00a0sued in federal court\u00a0by the Attala County branch of the NAACP and others\u00a0for his alleged discriminatory acts. The lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice and is currently going through the appeals process.<\/p>\n The justices found\u00a0that Evans deliberately worked to prevent prospective\u00a0Black jurors from serving during jury selection.<\/p>\n In 2020, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said the state would not try the case a seventh time, leaving Flowers a free man.<\/p>\n Flowers’ legal team, which includes civil rights attorney Rob McDuff, will also receive $50,000 for helping Flowers receive the compensation.<\/p>\n