A Mississippi man freed after nearly 23 years in prison filed a lawsuit Friday against the district attorney who prosecuted him six times in the killings of four people at a small-town furniture store (article available here).
Curtis Flowers was released in December 2019, about six months after the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out the conviction and death sentence from his sixth trial, which took place in 2010. Justices said prosecutors showed an unconstitutional pattern of excluding African American jurors in the trials of Flowers, who is Black.
The lawsuit filed Friday also names as defendants three investigators who worked with Montgomery County District Attorney Doug Evans. The county is not named as a defendant. The suit says 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.
In March, a judge ordered the state of Mississippi to pay Flowers $500,000 for wrongful imprisonment — the maximum under a state law that allows up to $50,000 a a year for 10 years.