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Monday, December 16, 2019

Feels Good To Be Free!

Mississippi man granted freedom abet temporarily. 
Curtis Flowers was set free. Well not exactly free, but he's granted a "get out free card."

Better than the DEATH card he was facing since his conviction in the 1990s. The Mississippi man was convicted for murder. He was granted a bond after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his death card on the grounds of the prosecutor showing racial bias.

Flowers was convicted of a quadruple murder at a Winona furniture store. Derrick "Bobo" Steward, Robert Golden, Beth Tardy and Carmen Rigby were killed.

They were shot in a botched robbery.
Mississippi prosecutor faces ethics charges. For years he excluded Black and non-white jurors in high profile cases because he felt that race could motivate jurors.
The county prosecutor Doug Evans was accused of racial bias and they have receipts. Evans was deliberately dismissing Black jurors because he felt that it cause a mistrial. He believed that Black jurors would side with the suspect because of race.

The circuit judge involved in the case, Joseph Loper set a $250,000 on 10%. He said it was troubling on how the prosecution have not responded to a defense motion to drop the charges completely against Flowers.
The Tardy Furniture murders capitated a nation. Now a man who was convicted of the crime may be walking because they don't have enough evidence to prove he done it.
Flowers spent 22 years in the iron college. He was criminally charged six times with a criminal act. It was often overturned. The sixth conviction had him sitting on the DEATH row.

Flowers had no criminal record, cooperated with police (without a lawyer) throughout the investigation and continued to participate in being a model citizen while in the iron college.

Even though he's out, he's not off the hook. The state is retrying him again. If found guilty he could be reissued the DEATH card. The suspect is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

In November, four black voters and a branch of the NAACP filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to permanently order Evans and his assistants to stop using peremptory challenges to remove African Americans as potential jurors.

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