Trials for two jurors accused of committing perjury at Curtis Flowers’ latest murder trial will be held outside Montgomery County.
James Bibbs’ trial is scheduled to begin July 28 in Yazoo City.
Mary Purnell’s is slated for Sept. 8, according to the Grenada Daily Star. A location has not been set, the newspaper reported.
Both Bibbs and Purnell were arrested and charged with perjury in September 2008 during Flowers’ fifth murder trial related to the slayings of four people at a Winona furniture store in 1996.
On the first day of the proceedings, Circuit Judge Joseph H. Loper Jr. ordered the arrest of Purnell, an alternate juror. Loper had received information that Flowers’ parents had visited Purnell; that Purnell had received more than 60 phone calls from the Carroll-Montgomery Regional Correctional Facility, where Flowers was housed; and that her name was on a list of people who had recently visited Flowers at the jail.
Later, during jury deliberations, juror Jennifer Bailey sent Loper a note that said Bibbs told other members of the jury he had seen evidence being planted inside Tardy Furniture store on the day of the murders.
At the end of the trial — which ended in a hung jury — Loper ordered that Bibbs also be jailed on perjury charges.
Bibbs’ attorney, Robert McDuff of Jackson, said his client has been wrongly accused.
“He didn’t vote the way the prosecution wanted, and unfortunately they responded by indicting him,” McDuff said.
According to his attorney, Bibbs simply stated his opinion that evidence could have been planted.
“A juror has a right to say that,” McDuff said.
Prosecuting jurors for their opinions on cases is a dangerous path that strikes at the heart of the jury system, McDuff said.
Bibbs and Purnell face two counts of perjury, and each count comes with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.
Circuit Judge Jannie Lewis has been appointed by the state Supreme Court to hear the cases. Lewis has granted motions by McDuff of Jackson to recuse the district attorney’s office and to move the trial. She denied a motion to dismiss the charge.
Flowers is charged in the shooting deaths of shop owner Bertha Tardy, 59, and three of her employees — Carmen Rigby, 45, Derrick “Bobo” Stewart, 16, and Robert Golden, 42. Each victim was shot in the head with a .380 semi-automatic handgun.
Prosecutors have said a motive for the shooting was Flowers being upset that Tardy had withheld $85 from his paycheck to cover the price of goods he damaged.
Flowers has maintained innocence for more than a decade.
He has been tried for the murders five times. The first three trials resulted in convictions and death sentences, but the results were overturned on appeal.
A fourth trial ended in a mistrial as the jury, divided along racial lines, could not reach a verdict. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty that time.
District Attorney Doug Evans again sought capital punishment in the fifth trial, which ended in another hung jury.
A sixth trial has not yet been scheduled, according to the Daily Star.
