Macon man found guilty of estranged wife’s shooting death

Jasento Flowers was paroled in 2001 after he’d been sentenced to life in prison nine years earlier on a cocaine charge.

Sentencing Flowers on Wednesday -- this time after a murder conviction -- Bibb County Superior Court Judge Howard Simms said he remembered Flowers’ drug case.

“In my view, the state of Georgia made a mistake when they paroled you from that life sentence,” Simms said. “If they hadn’t, this woman would probably still be alive.”

Jurors deliberated about 80 minutes before finding the 45-year-old Flowers guilty of murder in the 2014 shooting death of his estranged wife, 38-year-old Bridgette Flowers. He also was convicted of four counts of aggravated assault stemming from the drive-by shooting of two other people and shots fired at others.

Simms sentenced Flowers to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He also will simultaneously serve four 20-year sentences, one for each aggravated assault.

Bridgette’s daughter, sister and grandchild’s mother testified during the three-day trial that Flowers shot Bridgette in the face as she sat in a parked mini van on Trinity Place.

A GBI medical examiner testified Tuesday that the shot, which struck Bridgette in the nose, was fired from 1 or 2 feet away. The “concussive” force of the bullet caused “unsurvivable” brain injuries.

Bridgette’s daughter drove the van back to her mother’s Maynard Street home.

Several witnesses testified that they saw Flowers’ car, a BMW, drive down Maynard Street with gunshots fired from a window. The shots struck two people.

In his closing argument to jurors Wednesday, Flowers’ lawyer, Travis Griffin, urged them to doubt the witnesses’ credibility, saying Flowers’ car windows were stuck in the up position.

Two mechanics testified during the trial that the windows weren’t working when the car was examined in 2012, nor when it was checked several months ago.

With the problems Flowers and Bridgette had been having, Flowers “was an easy and ready-made patsy” to pin the killing on, Griffin said.

He also pointed to a lack of forensic evidence and corroborating eyewitness testimony aside from Bridgette’s family and close family friends. No phone records were presented at trial to corroborate the confession Bridgette’s son testified he heard Flowers make in a phone call just after the killing.

Prosecutor Jonathan Adams argued that Griffin’s talk of the car window was a “distraction,” a “single straw” to grasp at.

No one could testify to the condition of the window on the day of the killing, he said.

A surveillance video from the Gray Highway Wal-Mart showed Flowers beat Bridgette on Valentine’s Day 2014, about a week before her death.

He finished what he started with his fists using a gun, Adams said.

Witnesses testified to hearing phone conversations on speakerphone in which Flowers threaten to kill Bridgette and then kill himself, Adams said.

To contact writer Amy Leigh Womack, call 744-4398.

This story was originally published July 1, 2015 at 11:02 AM with the headline "Macon man found guilty of estranged wife’s shooting death ."