Mississippi To Pay $500K To Black Man Wrongfully Incarcerated For 23 Years
Curtis Flowers, a 50-year-old Black man, has been awarded $500K by the state of Mississippi after officials wrongfully incarcerated him for 23 years.
On Tuesday (Mar. 2), Mississippi 5th Circuit Judge George Mitchell ruled that Flowers would receive the state’s maximum compensation of $500,000 after spending nearly half his life on death row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Mitchell was wrongfully convicted in the shooting deaths of four people back in 1996, at the Tardy Furniture Store in Winona.
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It’s stated Flowers was an employee of the store until about two weeks prior the murders of store owner Bertha Tardy, 59, and employees, Robert Golden, 42, Carmen Rigby, 45, and Derrick Stewart, 16. While there was no motive or evidence showing Flowers as the murderer — and some experts revealed there was in-fact evidence of more than one person involved in the crime — Flowers was still convicted and sentenced to death in 1997. Now, he’s been freed and received $50,000 per year incarcerated, with a cap of $500,000. He’ll receive $50K annually for the next 10 years.
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