JACKSON - Curtis Giovanni Flowers has been down this road before - twice to be exact.
The Mississippi Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments for Feb. 8 on Flowers' third conviction for capital murder in the deaths of four people during a shooting spree at a Winona furniture store in 1996.
Death penalty cases are automatically reviewed by the Supreme Court.
Flowers was convicted and sentenced to death in 2004 in Montgomery County.
Twice before, Flowers was convicted of capital murder involving one of the victims and each time his conviction and death sentence were thrown out on appeal.
The first time, Flowers was charged with killing Bertha Tardy, 59, the owner of Tardy Furniture Store.
The second time, he was found guilty of killing store employee Derrick Stewart, 16.
The Supreme Court in both cases held that prosecutors erred in introducing evidence from the other three cases instead of focusing on one case.
The justices said prosecutors went too far in the questioning of witnesses about all four murders, in offering photographs of the victims into evidence and in arguments to jurors linking Flowers to the other crimes.
Flowers, now 35, argued that references to the other killings turned the jury against him.
In 2004, Flowers was convicted of all four murders - Tardy, Stewart, store employee Carmen Rigby, 45, and delivery man Robert Golden, 42.
Flowers also was convicted of robbing the store of at least $400 that was in the cash drawer.
Prosecutors said Flowers, who had been fired from his job at the business, had not received his last paycheck.
They said Tardy, the store's owner, had kept the check as payment for golf cart batteries she felt Flowers had damaged.
Defense attorneys claimed Flowers was at a relative's home at the time of the murders. They argued that no one saw Flowers go in or come out of the store on the day of the murders.
