WINONA n Having not reached a decision by 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, the jury in the capital murder trial of Curtis Giovanni Flowers was expected to reconvene at 9 a.m. today to continue deliberations.
Closing arguments wrapped up Tuesday afternoon just before 2:30, and the jury n composed of seven whites and five blacks n was given its instructions before slipping into the jury room inside the Winona courthouse.
Jurors spent three hours deliberating Tuesday.
Flowers, 37, is accused of killing four people in a 1996 shooting rampage at Tardy Furniture, where he worked for a short time.
Those killed on the morning of July 16, 1996, were store owner Bertha Tardy, 59, store employees Derrick “Bobo” Stewart, 16, and Carmen Rigby, 45, and delivery man Robert Golden, 42. Prosecutors have said a possible motive for the shooting was Flowers being upset because Tardy was holding his $85 paycheck to pay for three batteries he had damaged.
Flowers was 26 years old at the time of the murders.
“Each of these witnesses are just like a puzzle,” District Attorney Doug Evans told jurors in his closing argument. The state called 25 witnesses during the trial. “They put the whole thing together. There is all kinds of evidence.
“I want you to think about all we've proven.”
Evans said Flowers “made a big mistake” when he stepped in Stewart's blood, leaving three prints from size 10½ Fila Grant Hill athletic shoes on the store's floor. Investigators found a shoebox to match the shoes in Flowers' home the day of the shootings.
“He may have gotten rid of the shoes but he didn't get rid of the box,” Evans said.
In a statement given to investigators, Flowers said he was never on the east side of Highway 51 on the day of the murders and in fact was asleep when the murders occurred.
“Y'all have heard a parade of witnesses say he's wrong,” said Evans of witnesses claiming to have seen Flowers on the east side Highway 51 . “All these folks saw him while he was asleep. He made a big mistake in letting all these folks see him.”
Flowers' defense attorneys, Ray Charles Carter and Andre de Gruy of the state Office of Capital Defense Counsel, both delivered closing arguments, saying the state had no scientific evidence against Flowers.
“Innocent people go to jail and shouldn't have to go on flimsy, weak, lying witnesses,” Carter told jurors. Carter argued that Odell Hallmon, a Mississippi State Penitentiary inmate who testified that Flowers admitted to the killings, could not be trusted. “I can't even believe Mr. Evans can look you in the eyes and tell you (Hallmon) is someone to trust. That is the height of hypocrisy and outright lying to sit here and say he's a honorable man. You are not seeking justice when you bring some scoundrel in here to lie on a man.”
Carter said Evans could not be trusted either.
“You honor, I object,” Evans said. “That is a personal attack.”
Circuit Judge Clarence Morgan III told Carter, “That is completely inappropriate.”
Carter told jurors that if Flowers had a plan to commit the murders, “the plan sure involved changing clothes a lot.”
Of seven witnesses claiming to have seen Flowers on the day of the shootings, four gave conflicting testimony about what he was wearing; three couldn't remember.
Du Gruy told jurors that while Evans referred to the jury's instructions as a “map,” he thought of it like a “maze.”
“The pieces don't fit,” Du Gruy said.
“Curtis Flowers was not at Tardy Furniture on the morning of July, 16, 1996,” Du Gruy said. “I know he wasn't.”
Responding to the defense's closing argument, Evans said, “You know you're hitting home when they're attacking the opposing attorney and experts.
“I almost couldn't sit still when I heard them say there's no scientific evidence. I don't know what they call the bloody prints and the shell casings.”
Found at the scene of the murder were five shell casings from a .380 semi-automatic handgun.
No murder weapon has been found.
“There is no way we didn't prove this case,” Evans said in closing.
Flowers faces life in prison without parole if convicted. He has been found guilty of capital murder in three previous trials, but each conviction was lost on appeal and new trials ordered because of prosecutorial errors.
The last conviction, in 2004, was handed down by a jury consisting of 11 whites and one black.
