A request for bail in the capital murder case of Curtis Giovanni Flowers will be heard in Webster County.
Circuit Judge Joseph Loper has scheduled the hearing for 11 a.m. Dec. 16 on Flowers' motion to set reasonable bail. The matter will be heard at the Webster County Courthouse in Walthall, according to Beverly Pettigrew Kraft, public information officer for the Mississippi Administrative Office of Courts.
Flowers has been tried six times and has been on Mississippi's death row for the 1996 murders of four people at Tardy Furniture in Winona in Montgomery County.
In June the U.S. Supreme Court reversed his conviction, ruling District Attorney Doug Evans intentionally removed black jurors in a 2010 trial.
The decision said the prosecutor’s efforts to keep African Americans off the jury violated the Constitution.
A class-action lawsuit against Evans was filed Nov. 18 in federal court in Greenville. The plaintiffs — four black would-be jurors in Evans' district and the Attala County branch of the NAACP — are represented by lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the MacArthur Justice Center. They claim Evans is violating their constitutional rights by systematically preventing African Americans from serving on juries.
The lawsuit, which represents one side of a legal argument, asks U.S. District Judge Debra Brown to permanently order Evans and his assistants to stop using peremptory challenges to remove African American jurors because of their race. The 5th Circuit Court District where Evans serves as district attorney, includes Webster County.
Flowers is incarcerated at the Winston-Choctaw County Regional Correctional Facility in Louisville waiting to find out if he'll face a seventh trial. In addition to seeking bail on the still-pending murder charges, his lawyers are asking to have those charges dismissed. They’ve also asked a state court judge to exclude Evans from the case.
