State of Mississippi v. Curtis Giovanni Flowers

Case Number:

Judge: Not Aavailable

Court: Lee County, Mississippi

Plaintiff's Attorney: Montgomery County District Attorney's Office

Defendant's Attorney: Henderson Hill, Rob McDuff, Alison R. Steiner, Sheri Lynn Johnson and Keir M. Weyble

Description:

At approximately 9:00 on the morning of July 16, 1996, Bertha Tardy, the owner of
Tardy Furniture Store, called Sam Jones and asked him to come to the store to train two new
employees. When Jones arrived at the store a short time later, he discovered the bodies of
Bertha Tardy, Robert Golden, Carmen Rigby, and Derrick Stewart. All four victims had
been shot in the head; Stewart was the only victim still alive when Jones arrived. Jones went
to a nearby business and asked an employee to call the police. Johnny Hargrove, the City of
Winona Police Chief, was the first law enforcement officer to arrive; he called for backup
and ambulance services. Shell casings from 0.380 caliber bullets were recovered from the
scene, and a bloody shoeprint was found near one of the victims.

Shortly after officers arrived at the scene, law enforcement officers received a call
about an auto burglary at Angelica Garment Factory in Winona. Deputy Sheriff Bill
Thornburg responded, and he learned that someone had burglarized Doyle Simpson’s car and
had stolen a 0.380 caliber pistol. Katherine Snow, an Angelica employee, placed Curtis
Flowers at Simpson’s car around 7:15 that morning.

Police interviewed Flowers around 1:30 that afternoon, and Flowers consented to a
gunshot residue test. Police interviewed Flowers again two days later on July 18, 1996.
Flowers claimed to have been babysitting his girlfriend’s children on the morning of the
murders, but he provided inconsistent statements about his schedule. During the July 16
interview, Flowers said that he woke up around 6:30 a.m. on the day of the murders and went
to his sister’s house around 9:00 a.m., then went to a local store around 10:00 a.m. On July
18, Flowers said that, on the morning of the murders, he woke up around 9:30 a.m., went to
his sister’s house around noon, and went to the store at approximately 12:45 p.m. Flowers
told investigators that he had been employed at Tardy Furniture for a few days earlier that
month, but he had been fired on July 6 after he did not show up for a few days. Flowers
moved to Texas in September 1996. After further investigation, Flowers was arrested and
brought back to Mississippi. He was indicted on four separate counts of capital murder in
March 1997.

Flowers was tried for the murder of Bertha Tardy in October 1997. After a change
of venue from Montgomery County to Lee County, Flowers was convicted and sentenced to
death. Flowers appealed and we reversed and remanded for a new trial on the ground that
Flowers’s right to a fair trial had been violated by admission of evidence of the other three
murder victims. Flowers v. State, 773 So. 2d 309 (Miss. 2000) (“Flowers I”). Flowers’s
second trial was for the murder of Derrick Stewart; it was held in Harrison County in March
1999. The jury returned a guilty verdict and sentenced Flowers to death. On appeal, we
again reversed and remanded for a new trial. The Court held that Flowers’s right to a fair
trial had been violated, again, by admission of evidence of the other victims and by the
prosecution arguing facts that were not in evidence. Flowers v. State, 842 So. 2d 531 (Miss.
2003) (“Flowers II”).

The Montgomery County Circuit Court held Flowers’s third trial in 2004 and tried him
for all four murders. The jury found Flowers guilty and sentenced him to death. Finding that
the State had engaged in racial discrimination during jury selection, the Court once again
reversed and remanded the case for a new trial. Flowers v. State, 947 So. 2d 910 (Miss.
2007) (“Flowers III”). Flowers’s fourth and fifth trials also were on all four counts of
capital murder. Both resulted in mistrials when the jury was unable to reach a unanimous
verdict during the culpability phase. The State did not seek the death penalty in the fourth
trial but did seek it in the fifth trial.

The circuit court conducted Flowers’s sixth trial, the subject of the instant appeal, in
June 2010 in Montgomery County. The State tried Flowers for all four murders. The State
called twenty-one witnesses in its case-in-chief. Police Chief Johnny Hargrove was the
State’s first witness. Hargrove testified that police had found a bloody shoeprint at the scene.
Hargrove had asked the District Attorney’s Office and the Highway Patrol to help investigate
the murders. Mississippi Highway Patrol Investigator Jack Matthews testified that he saw
a bloody shoeprint and shell casings scattered near the bodies. Matthews testified that cash
was taken from the store during the murders and that he found Flowers’s time sheet and a
check made out to him for $82.58 on Bertha Tardy’s desk. Matthews said that, according to
the documents on Bertha Tardy’s desk, the store would have had $300 cash on hand that
morning. However, there was only change, no bills, in the cash drawer. During his
investigation, Matthews spoke with Roxanne Ballard, Bertha Tardy’s daughter, and learned
that Flowers recently had been fired from his job at Tardy Furniture. Matthews testified that
$235 was found hidden in Flowers’s headboard after the murders. He also testified that
Flowers wore a size ten-and-a-half shoe.

Ballard was the bookkeeper at Tardy Furniture and had worked in the store her whole
life. Looking at the books from the morning of the murders, Ballard testified that the store
had $400 in the cash drawer that morning. However, she confirmed Matthews’s testimony
that the books showed $300, but Ballard saw a receipt for a late charge in the amount of
$100, so she knew the drawer had contained a total of $400. Ballard testified that $389 was
missing from the cash drawer after the murders. Also, looking at pictures from the crime
scene, Ballard testified that the photos showed a bank bag lying wide open on a pile of fabric
swatches. She testified that the bank bag was always closed and it should have been in a
drawer or on Carmen Rigby’s desk.

Melissa Schoene, a crime scene expert with the Mississippi Crime Laboratory,
testified that she took impressions of the bloody shoeprint and collected the 0.380 caliber
casings. Sheriff Bill Thornburg testified that he had gone to Angelica Garment Factory on
the day of the murders to investigate Doyle Simpson’s stolen 0.380 caliber pistol. Thornburg
testified that it looked like a screwdriver or tire iron had been used to pry open the glove box
of Simpson’s car. Thornburg also went to Simpson’s mother’s home to collect spent 0.380
hulls from Simpson’s gun. A few days after the murders, Thornburg searched the home of
Connie Moore, Flowers’s girlfriend. He found a size ten-and-a-half Fila Grant Hill shoebox
in a dresser at Moore’s house.

David Balash, a firearms identification expert, testified that the bullets collected from
Tardy Furniture either matched the bullets or were consistent with the bullets collected from
Simpson’s mother’s house. Joe Andrews, a forensic scientist specializing in trace evidence,
testified that Flowers’s gunshot residue test revealed one particle of gunshot residue on the
back of Flowers’s right hand. Andrews also analyzed the shoeprint found at Tardy Furniture,
and he determined that the print was consistent with size ten-and-a-half Fila Grant Hill tennis
shoes. Patricia Hallmon Odom Sullivan, one of Flowers’s neighbors, testified that she saw

Flowers wearing Fila Grant Hill tennis shoes at 7:30 a.m. on the day of the murders. Elaine
Goldstein, another neighbor, testified that she had seen Flowers wear Fila Grant Hill tennis
shoes a couple of months before the murders.

Multiple witnesses placed Flowers at or around Angelica Garment Factory and Tardy
Furniture on the morning of the murders. Katherine Snow, an Angelica Garment Factory
employee, testified that she saw Flowers leaning against Simpson’s car at 7:15 on the
morning of the murders. Snow also identified Flowers in a photographic lineup and in court.
James Kennedy testified that he saw Flowers walking toward Angelica Garment Factory at
7:15 a.m. Edward McChristian testified that he saw Flowers walking north, away from
Angelica Garment Factory, between 7:30 and 8:00 a.m. Mary Jeanette Fleming testified that
she saw Flowers walking toward Tardy Furniture at approximately 9:00 a.m. Beneva Henry
testified that she saw Flowers walking toward downtown Winona, in the direction of Tardy
Furniture, sometime between 9:00 and 9:30 a.m.2 Clemmie Fleming testified that she was
going to Tardy Furniture to pay a bill a little after 10:00 a.m, and she saw Flowers running
away from the back of Tardy Furniture.

Porky Collins testified that he saw two African-American men, who appeared to be
arguing, outside Tardy Furniture at around 10:00 on the morning of the murders. Collins
circled the block and returned to where he saw the men arguing; at that point, the men were
headed toward Tardy Furniture. Collins identified Flowers as one of the men he saw that
morning. Doyle Simpson testified that his 0.380 caliber pistol was in his car’s glove
compartment when he arrived at Angelica the morning of July 16, 1996. Simpson discovered
that his gun was missing at approximately 11:00 a.m. that day. Simpson, who was Flowers’s
uncle, testified that Flowers knew he had a gun and that Flowers had seen it in his car before.
Odell Hallmon, a jailhouse informant who had been in a cell next to Flowers, testified that
Flowers had confessed to killing four people at Tardy Furniture.

After the State’s case-in-chief, the defense moved for a directed verdict, which the
trial court denied. The first witness to testify in the defense’s case-in-chief was Mike
McSparrin, a fingerprint expert. McSparrin testified that the fingerprints found at the crime
scene, as well as on the Fila shoebox, did not match Flowers’s fingerprints. The defense also
called Steve Byrd, a firearms forensic analyst. Byrd testified that he could not definitively
determine whether all of the bullets recovered from the crime scene were fired from the same
gun. James Williams, a law enforcement investigator, testified that he did not see a bloody
footprint when he first arrived at Tardy Furniture. Billy Glover testified that, on the day of
the murders, he saw Flowers around 9:00 a.m. at a friend’s house and that they talked for
fifteen or twenty minutes. Connie Moore, Flowers’s girlfriend at the time, testified that she
had purchased a pair of size ten-and-a-half Fila Grant Hill tennis shoes for her son.

Stacey Wright testified that Clemmie Flemming had admitted to her that she had lied
about seeing Flowers running away from Tardy Furniture on the morning of the murders.
Wright testified that Clemmie had said she would get money or have her bill paid at Tardy
Furniture in return for her statement against Flowers. Clemmie’s sister, Mary Flemming,
testified that she was with Clemmie the morning of the murders and that Clemmie did not
go to Tardy Furniture to pay her bill that morning. Latarsha Blissett also testified that
Clemmie had told her that if she made a statement against Flowers, she would get money or
have her account at Tardy Furniture paid. Further, Blissett testified that investigators had
asked her if she knew Flowers’s shoe size and had implied that she would receive reward
money for providing a statement. Kittery Jones, Flowers’s cousin, also testified that
investigators had implied that he would receive reward money in return for providing a
statement linking Flowers to the murders.

On June 18, 2010, the jury returned a guilty verdict for all four murders. Following
the sentencing hearing, the jury sentenced Flowers to death. The jury found the following
aggravating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt: (1) the defendant knowingly created
a great risk of death to many persons; (2) the capital offenses were committed while the
defendant was engaged in the commission of an armed robbery for pecuniary gain; and (3)
the capital offenses were committed for the purpose of avoiding or preventing lawful arrest
or effecting an escape from custody. Flowers filed a motion for judgment notwithstanding
the verdict (JNOV) or, in the alternative, for a new trial, which was denied. Flowers timely
filed a notice of appeal.

Outcome: Defend was tried six times and spent 26 years in prison before the charges against him were dropped.

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