After 6 Murder Trials and 23 Years Behind Bars, Curtis Flowers Is Set Free

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The scope of good news that makes Recharge is expansive, from stories of justice achieved to the brightening, heartening, surprising boosts from the archives, like Dorothea Lange’s photos getting digitized, Satchel Paige’s life advice revisited (from our second-ever magazine), and Pharoahe Monch’s truth-telling returned to. Then there’s the genre of good that is essentially bad interrupted, or atrocity halted; when injustice is intervened on late, like wrongly prosecuted people no longer prosecuted, decades after irreversible harm accumulates.

My colleague Venu Gupta messaged me with a story of exactly this kind. An innocent man, Curtis Flowers, tried six times on murder changes and incarcerated for 23 years before the case was dropped. “How have we come to a point where we caused so much pain to someone and feel like the end of that pain is a celebration?” Venu asked. What does it say about the world “that a man who was not guilty and spent decades in jail after six trials was then found not guilty”?

Read the full story by Mother Jones and by the Mississippi Center for Justice’s tireless, heroic leaders (here and here), and share more goodness like it, and all forms of recharges, at recharge@motherjones.com. Also share the Recharge blog at motherjones.com/recharge with one person who might want or need it today.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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