Essay Sample about Curtis Flowers

For over two decades, this conflict divided a state against each other. On July 16th, 1996, in Winona, Mississippi, four innocent individuals were tragically shot dead. The one in particular that endured the shooting was Bobo however he unfortunately died seven days after the killings because of his critical condition. The city of Winona later raised thirty thousand dollars to give to the individual that found the person who committed this crime. The podcast In The Dark led by Madeleine Baran goes into further detail with this case. Despite the prosecutions’ star witness, Odell Hallmon, being a minority, racism, a dishonorable law system, and inaccurate evidence convicted an innocent man of murder.

Curtis Flowers had to go through being in a minority for most of his life. More than twenty years of his life was devoted to a crime that he didn’t commit. Despite the fact that there was proof, the confirmation wasn't sufficient enough. A portion of the evidence included the gun, the route, and the confessions. This multitude of things indicted Flowers for a homicide because of him being an African American in the 1990's through the 2000’s. Doug Evans and John Johnson were individuals that sentenced him regarding this homicide. They kicked many "black people" off of the jury with sixty-one of the seventy-two jurors in those six trials being white. (City was about 50% black). Evans later on exclaimed that they took the African American jures out due to them worrying about them knowing Flowers. Although many of the white jures could’ve known Curtis as well. One of the Jures named Jestice Brett Kavanaugh said that this information that Evans stated was false since he didn’t ask specific enough questions to the white jures. 

Flowers spent a long period in prison due to biased evidence disclosed by Evans during the trial. Fredrick Veel was one of the many who lied in court about Flowers carrying out the homicides at Tardy. In his testimony he expressed that late at night Curtis told him that he killed the people in the furniture store. Veel conveniently was bailed out of jail within a day after he made the testimony and the charges against him were dropped. Sheriff Banks and Evans also stated that Fredrick would get the thirty thousand dollars that was raised to find the murderer. Veel never got the money so he came forward and said that he felt pressured by law enforcement to lie. 

Physical evidence that the case included was the gun. Doyle had a gun stolen from his car. Law enforcement believed that this was the gun that was used in the homicide so they sent bullets into a laboratory. Along with some bullets that they dug out of Doyle Simpsons' wooden post in his backyard. This data that they shipped off the lab is exceptionally off base because of the way that when a weapon is shot it gets extraordinary scratches yet because of Simpson shooting it into a post it leaves different imprints. Law enforcement also dug these bullets out with a knife making more scratches making this information incredibly unreliable. Lastly, the third main piece of  evidence that was used against Flowers was the route that he took. This included 12 “witnesses” and most of them came months after the murder happened. In particular, the main route witness was Clemmie Flemming and she testified that she saw Flowers “running from Tardies'”, but later stated that she didn't remember the exact day that she saw him. 

Circumstantial evidence is proof that can gradually fall to pieces with additional things being uncovered to the world. There were many other suspects that Doug Evans ruled completely out for no reason. For instance, Jeffery Armstrong’s dog found a .380 pistol 5 years after the murder. The gun was rusting and was very old, but when Flowers’ lawyer asked about the gun and all the information disappeared. Evans stated that Armstrong was “mentally ill” and the information was not “reliable”. This is very important due to the fact that Armstrong’s house was only 700 feet away from Tardy Furniture. Along with there being tunnels underneath train tracks. One man named Odell Halmon was an inmate with Flowers. He stated at court that he killed the four people at Tardy. Halmon got arrested for stabbing someone and he got four years of jail time, although he should've gotten more. Only a few months after he was released the homicide happened, but he was never investigated for killing them. Shortly after he got arrested again for assault, cocaine, and robbery.