Supreme Court’s 2019 ruling cited removal of Black jurors
Curtis Flowers, a Black man who spent more than 22 years in Mississippi prisons and on death row before the U.S. Supreme Court threw out his conviction and death sentence, died Wednesday at his home at age 56. His family confirmed the death Thursday through his attorney Rob McDuff to the Associated Press. No cause of death was given, said McDuff, who was part of Flowers’ legal team.
Flowers was 26 years old when he was arrested several months after the July 1996 shooting deaths of four people inside a furniture store in Winona, Mississippi. At the time, prosecutors described him as a disgruntled former employee who sought revenge against the store’s owner because she fired him and withheld most of his pay to cover the cost of merchandise he damaged. Nearly $300 was found missing after the killings.
He was tried in the killings six times. During the sixth and final trial in 2010, Flowers was sentenced to death. The jury in that case included 11 white jurors and one Black juror after District Attorney Doug Evans struck five Black prospective jurors during jury selection.
In a 7-2 decision in 2019, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the U.S. Supreme Court that the removal of Black prospective jurors in Flowers’ trial deprived him of a fair trial. The high court overturned his conviction and death sentence.
Flowers remained in prison for six months after the Supreme Court ruling because he was still under indictment. A judge set bond, and Flowers was released in December 2019.
Mississippi dropped charges against Flowers in September 2020.
“Today, I am finally free from the injustice that left me locked in a box for nearly 23 years,” Flowers said in a statement at the time. “I’ve been asked if I ever thought this day would come. I have been blessed with a family that never gave up on me and with them by my side, I knew it would.”