The state of Mississippi has been ordered to pay $500,000 to a man wrongfully imprisoned for nearly 23 years ― the maximum amount state law allows.
Curtis Flowers was incarcerated continuously from his January 1997 arrest until his release in December 2019. He has always maintained his innocence and had no prior criminal record.
“I feel good,” Flowers, who was 26 at the time of his arrest, told American Public Media Reports on Tuesday after Circuit Judge George Mitchell ordered the state to pay $50,000 each year for 10 years, with an additional $50,000 for attorneys’ fees.
That’s the maximum allowed under state law. But it denies compensation to Flowers for more than half of his 23 years behind bars.
“I believe it should have been more, but I feel good,” Flowers said.
District Attorney Doug Evans brought Flowers to trial an incredible six times for the 1996 slayings of four people at a furniture store in Winona, a small town north of Jackson. Defense attorneys argued that physical evidence and statements from witnesses were too weak to convict him.
Two of Flowers’ trials ended with hung juries. Four resulted in convictions and death sentences ― all later overturned for prosecutorial misconduct.
Appeals eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which voted 7-2 in June 2019 that Evans, a white man, had purposefully sought to exclude Black jurors and thus denied Flowers a fair trial.
Evans recused himself from the case before a potential seventh trial, writing in a court document: “I have personally prosecuted the defendant in all six of his prior trials. While I remain confident in both the investigation and jury verdicts in this matter, I have come to the conclusion that my continued involvement will prevent the families from obtaining justice and from the defendant being held responsible for his actions.”
Flowers was released on bail to home confinement and was finally set free when all charges against him were dropped in September.
Critics, including activist attorney Rabia Chaudry, decried the amount of the state’s compensation as far too little to account for the injustice.
Other states allow for greater compensation. In Nevada this week, a Las Vegas man was granted $1.3 million for being wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for 18 years in a murder case.