Can a person be tried more than once for the same crime in the United States? Under usual circumstances, no. But in Mississippi, one man was tried six times for the same brutal crime-and his ordeal still hasn't ended.
One July morning in 1996, three people were discovered dead and one at death's door in a furniture store in Winona, Mississippi. Three of the victims were white-including the store owner. That same day, a black man, Curtis Flowers, was identified as the prime suspect.
Flowers had worked at the store for three days and had quit under questionable circumstances. But almost no substantive evidence linked him to the crime. A devout Christian and gospel singer, Flowers had no prior criminal record and the barest of motives. Caught between a relentless Mississippi prosecutor and the fury of both African-American and white communities in his town, Flowers has endured six separate trials over more than a decade in a case that remains undecided.
Paul Alexander is the author of the bestselling true crime titles Homicidal, Murdered, and Accused. In this painstakingly researched and masterfully-written account, he exposes the ugly racial divides running beneath the surface of a sleepy Southern town-and raises troubling questions about America's criminal justice system, particularly in the Deep South.
