Trump Claims That Nick Cannon Is a Really Good Rapper and 15,413 Other Lies He’s Told Since Taking Office

In the past 1,055 days, Trump has claimed that pumpkin pie is better than sweet potato pie, noted that he’s seen all volumes of Hidden Colors and that Byron Allen is a funny comedian.

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Bond hearing set for Mississippi man tried 6 times in shooting deaths of 4 people

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A judge was being asked to set bond Monday for a Mississippi man waiting to hear whether prosecutors will try him a seventh time in a quadruple slaying 23 years ago.

Curtis Flowers was scheduled to appear on Monday in Montgomery County Circuit Court in Winona, where four employees of the Tardy Furniture store were fatally shot in 1996.

Flowers, 49, was convicted four times in the slayings. All four convictions were overturned; two other trials ended in a mistrial. District Attorney Doug Evans has not said whether he intends to try Flowers again.

During the sixth trial in 2010, Flowers was sentenced to death. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned that conviction in June, finding that prosecutors had shown an unconstitutional pattern of excluding African American jurors in the trials of Flowers, who is Black.

READ MORE: Texas deputy goes viral after repeatedly trying to arrest the wrong Black man

After the Supreme Court ruling, Flowers was moved off death row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman and taken to a regional jail in the central Mississippi town of Louisville.

One of the attorneys now representing Flowers is Rob McDuff of the Mississippi Center for Justice. He argues that Mississippi law requires bail after two capital murder mistrials. McDuff is asking Circuit Judge Joseph Loper to set bail and allow Flowers to be released from custody for the first time in 22 years.

Flowers’ attorneys are expected to argue at another hearing, not yet set, that the judge should dismiss the charges altogether.

READ MORE: Supreme Court set to hear Curtis Flowers case on racial bias in jury selection

If the judge agrees to a bail bond, it’s unclear how soon Flowers could be released. The timing depends on several factors, including whether bail money is readily available. Generally, at least 10% must be paid.

The four people killed on July 16, 1996, were store owner Bertha Tardy, 59, and three employees: 45-year-old Carmen Rigby, 42-year-old Robert Golden and 16-year-old Derrick “Bobo” Stewart.

Prosecutors tied Flowers to the slayings through bullets found at the crime scene; a bloody shoeprint next to one of the victims’ bodies, and gunshot residue they said they found on Flowers’ right hand.

Defense attorneys, however, said the shoeprint was not his; that investigators failed to prove a connection between the bullets and Flowers; and that only a single particle of gunshot residue was found on him after he was in a police station — an amount they said could have been on almost anyone at a police office.

READ MORE: Reminder of racist horror: Mississippi man admits to burning cross to scare Black families

Winona sits near the crossroads of Interstate 55, the major north-south artery in Mississippi, and U.S. Highway 82, which runs east to west. It about a half-hour’s drive from the flatlands of the Mississippi Delta. Among its 4,300 residents, about 48% are Black and 44% are white. Census Bureau figures show that about 30% live in poverty.

In mid-November, four Black voters and a branch of the NAACP filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to permanently order Evans and his assistants to stop using peremptory challenges to remove African American residents as potential jurors because of their race.

The lawsuit cites an analysis of jury strikes by Evans from 1992 to 2017 by American Public Media’s “In the Dark” podcast. It found Evans’ office used peremptory strikes, which lawyers typically don’t have to explain, to remove 50% of eligible Black jurors, but only 11% of eligible white jurors. The analysis was performed as part of a series of episodes questioning Flowers’ conviction in his sixth trial.

The post Bond hearing set for Mississippi man tried 6 times in shooting deaths of 4 people appeared first on theGrio.

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Monday's Best Deals: KitchenAid, Oral B, Crest, SimpliSafe Security, and More

A KitchenAid Artisan Gold Box, an Oral B, Crest, and Gilette Gold Box, and a $25 Blu-ray copy of Jurassic World 5-Movie Collection lead off Monday’s best deals from around the web.

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From Here to Eternity: Fashion Icon Bethann Hardison Proves Her Slay Is Timeless in Gucci's New Lookbook

When it comes to fashion influencers, there’s one who’s been at it since before Instagram was a twinkle in its creators’ eyes. Advocate, activist, agent, influencer and sometime model Bethann Hardison began her now 50-year career in fashion as a merchandising student who failed to graduate from New York City’s Fashion…

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Historic Black church in West End of Charlotte may soon become condos

A historic Black church in Charlotte may soon become condos.

Built in 1927 and designed by one of Charlotte’s preeminent architects, the historic Wesley Heights Methodist is now slated to become condominiums if a certificate of appropriateness filed with the Charlotte Historic District Commission is approved, according to WBTV.

READ MORE: On Good Friday, several key ways the Black church could win back millennials

David Wales, listed as the applicant/owner of the slated Villa Emmanuel condominium project, filed the application detailing how the building would be renovated. However, some of the commission staff have already expressed concerns that the project would take away from the “original, character-defining stained-glass windows,” reported WBTV.

When the church was first built, a white congregation worshiped at Wesley Heights Methodist. Since then, it has become predominantly Black, media outlets reported.

“What is really sad is that there was a backup contract to save the church, including the interior, and use it as the home for a host of agencies to help people,” Dan Morrill, a Charlotte historic preservationist, said in a Facebook post.

J’Tanya Adams, the founder and program director of the non-profit, Historic West End Partners, told The Charlotte Observer that she initially wanted her charity to buy the property and that she would have preserved the church’s features and mainly used space in the building, as well as the parsonage, for performing and culinary arts. Morrill backed this project.

Adams told the newspaper that she was also being supported by Hugh McColl, the former Bank of America CEO, who met with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission in October to attempt to raise support for Adams’ project. Since the commission “buys and sells endangered historic landmarks through its $9 million revolving fund and places preservation covenants in the deeds when the properties are sold,” McColl was attempting to get the commission to buy the church and sell it to Historic West End Partners.

READ MORE: Contributions to burned Black churches increase after Notre Dame cathedral receives massive financial support

However, Adams reportedly was not able to explain how her non-profit would be able to come up with the funds to pay for the church.

Louis Asbury Sr., one of Charlotte’s premier architects, designed the church. “He also designed Myers Park Methodist,” Morrill said in a Facebook post. “Can you imagine putting condos there?”

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