The Mississippi Supreme Court, in a ruling announced today, has denied an emergency appeal by Curtis Giovanni Flowers for post-conviction discovery.
That means Flowers, convicted and sentenced for the murders of Winona furniture store owner Bertha Tardy and three of her employees, won’t have access to documents Flowers and his attorneys argued would help in the appeal of his death sentence. Previous court decisions regarding those documents will be upheld.
Flowers, a Montgomery County native, has been tried six times for the July 1996 killings. He was convicted in the first three trials, but all three were reversed by the Mississippi Supreme Court for prosecutorial misconduct. The fourth and fifth trials, in 2007 and 2008, resulted in mistrials because juries could not reach a verdict. The sixth trial in June 2010 resulted in his conviction for all four murders and a death sentence.
The Supreme Court affirmed that conviction and sentence in November 2014 and denied Flowers’ request for rehearing in March 2015.
The defense sought documents related to jury selection and correspondence between a prosecuting attorney and a former witness from the sixth trial who has since been prosecuted for tax fraud, arguing that all the inconsistencies in Flowers’ prosecution warrant a closer look at previously undisclosed documents.
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court denied the request May 20.
For more coverage, see Friday’s Commonwealth.
nContact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
Supreme Court order
