After 6 Murder Trials and Nearly 24 Years, Charges Dropped Against Curtis Flowers

Mr. Flowers had faced the possibility of a seventh trial in the quadruple-murder case from Mississippi.

By Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Sept. 4, 2020

Six times, prosecutors took Curtis Flowers, a Black Mississippi resident, to trial on the same murder case before mostly-white juries. And six times, the trials ended with convictions that were later reversed or with mistrials. But on Friday, two decades after prosecutors began pursuing murder charges against Mr. Flowers, they announced that they were dropping the case.

In a memo seeking dismissal of the charges, prosecutors from the Mississippi attorney general’s office wrote that “it is in the interest of justice that the State will not seek an unprecedented seventh trial of Mr. Flowers.”

Mr. Flowers, who is 50, said in a statement issued by his lawyers that he had never given up on the idea that the case could one day be over.

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