Parchman is often called one of the worst prisons in America. On every other day, he is just inmate R2436, one of 43 men housed in solitary 8-by-12 cells on Mississippi's death row. Still, these visits are more human contact than Curtis is used to. They haven't touched since Curtis' sixth trial, in 2010. "I go there to talk to Curtis, whatever he wants to talk about," Lola said. When they finally see Curtis, he's seated behind a thick glass partition. Before they're allowed inside, they are frisked and screened again. Then the Flowers get on a bus to the building where their son waits. They direct Archie and Lola through a metal detector and tell them to take off their shoes. "Don't nobody else show up." They search the Flowers' car as the couple pulls into the parking lot. "We know y'all are coming," the guards sometimes tell them. In 20 years, Archie and Lola have missed only a handful of visiting days - one for a surgery and the others during prison lockdowns. After winning his appeals, he just remained behind bars waiting for prosecutors to try him again. Through the many twists and turns in his case, he's never walked free, not after his conviction was overturned three separate times and not after two other trials ended in hung juries. 13, 1997, for allegedly murdering four people at Tardy Furniture in Winona. He's been incarcerated since his arrest, on Jan. This is the Mississippi State Penitentiary, a notorious prison in the Delta often referred to as Parchman Farm, where Curtis Flowers has spent most of the past two decades. "What you see up there now is Parchman," Lola said. "Emergency stopping only." Razor wire was visible in the distance, and a faint collection of shacks and sheds. In the summer, these fields burst alive with white cotton bolls.Īn hour and a quarter later, a roadside sign hinted that the prison was near. The occasional plantation home still stands back along the tree line, far from the passing cars. A few minutes out of town, the hills began to recede, and the land on either side of the road became sunken, wet and expansive. "You ain't gonna see nothing but fields," Lola said.
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