A Mississippi man who has been tried six times in the same murder case will be allowed to post bail and leave custody for the first time in 22 years. During a hearing on Monday 16th December 2019, a judge granted a bond request made by attorneys for 49-year-old Curtis Flowers. Bond was set at $250,000.
In July 1996, four people were shot dead in a furniture store in the north Mississippi town of Winona. Two trials involving Flowers ended in a mistrial. He was convicted four times. All four convictions were overturned. In the sixth trial, in 2010, Flowers was sentenced to death. Earlier this year the US supreme court overturned that conviction, finding prosecutors had shown an unconstitutional pattern of excluding African American jurors. The district attorney, Doug Evans, has not said if he intends to try Flowers again. If prosecutors do not respond, Loper said, “the state will reap the whirlwind”.
Flowers’s attorney, Rob McDuff, has argued that Mississippi law requires bail after two capital murder mistrials. “This case is unprecedented in the history of the American legal system,” McDuff said during the hearing which led to Flowers’s bail. Attorneys are expected to argue at another hearing that the judge should dismiss the charges all together.
Read more: Guardian, https://is.gd/O2FsiK
