TURNING THE TABLES

Curtis Flowers Sues District Attorney Who Prosecuted Him Six Times

After 23 years in prison, Curtis Flowers is free—and is demanding accountability.

After 23 years in prison for a wrongful conviction, Mississippi man Curtis Flowers is giving the state’s district attorney a taste of his own medicine. In 1996, Flowers, then 26 and without a criminal record, was charged with murdering four people at a furniture store. He was prosecuted six times by Montgomery County District Attorney Doug Evans: two ended in mistrials, four ended with convictions that were overturned each time. On Friday, Flowers, a Black man whose story was probed on the In The Dark podcast, said he had filed a suit against Evans and three other investigators for acting out of racial bias by excluding Black people from the jury in his trials. The lawsuit alleges that Evans and his team rewrote the narrative by “pressuring witnesses to fabricate claims about seeing Mr. Flowers in particular locations on the day of the murders” and insufficiently considering other viable suspects. The Supreme Court eventually overturned Flower’s sixth death penalty conviction.