Mississippi Man Sues District Attorney After Spending 23 Years In Prison
A Mississippi man who was freed from prison after serving nearly 23 years has reportedly filed a lawsuit Friday (September 3) against the district attorney who prosecuted him six times in the killings of four people at a furniture store.
KTAR reports that Curtis Flowers was released in December 2019, six months after the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out his conviction and death sentence from his sixth trial that happened in 2010. Justices said prosecutors demonstrated an unconstitutional pattern of excluding Black jurors from Flowers’ trials.
The lawsuit also names three investigators who worked with Montgomery County District Attorney Doug Evans as defendants. It claims Evans and the investigators engaged in misconduct, including “pressuring witnesses to fabricate claims about seeing Mr. Flowers in particular locations on the day of the murders” and ignoring other possible suspects.
It isn’t clear what kind of financial compensation Flowers is seeking.
“Curtis Flowers never should have been charged,” attorney Rob McDuff said in a news release Friday, according to KTAR.
McDuff said the killings “were clearly the work of professional criminals.” Flowers, who was 26 at the time of the crime, had no criminal record.
“The prosecution was tainted throughout by racial discrimination and repeated misconduct,” McDuff said. “This lawsuit seeks accountability for that misconduct.”