Curtis Flowers, a Black man whose death sentence was tossed by Supreme Court, dies in Mississippi

Curtis Flowers, a Black man who spent more than 22 years in prison and was on death row in Mississippi before the U.S. Supreme Court threw out his conviction and death sentence, has died. He was 56.

Flowers’ family confirmed that he died Wednesday at his home in Mississippi, attorney Rob McDuff told The Associated Press Thursday.

No cause of death was given, said McDuff, who was part of Flowers’ legal team.

Flowers was 26 when he was arrested several months after the July 1996 shooting deaths of four people inside a Winona, Mississippi, furniture store.

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.

Flowers was tried in the killings six times. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the high court’s 7-2 decision in 2019 that the removal of Black prospective jurors deprived Flowers of a fair trial.

During the sixth trial in 2010, Flowers was sentenced to death. There were 11 white jurors and one Black juror who considered the case after District Attorney Doug Evans struck five Black prospective jurors.

Flowers remained in prison for six months after the Supreme Court ruling because he was still under indictment. He finally was released in December 2019 after a judge set bond.

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 twenty three years,” Flowers said in a statement. “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.”

The legal team that represented Flowers for more than two decades said Thursday in a statement that each member feels “privileged to have called him a client.”

“Later, in the years after his release and exoneration, we felt equally honored to call him a friend,” the legal team said. “No matter where he was — on death row, at home on his parents’ porch with his feet up, singing in church, or fishing in a local pond — Curtis shared his light.”

The trials stretched back more than 20 years. The records showed Evans’ “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals,” with the goal of an all-white jury, Kavanaugh wrote.

In the earlier trials, three convictions were tossed out, including one when the prosecutor improperly excluded African Americans from the jury. In the second trial, the judge chided Evans for striking a juror based on race. Two other trials ended when jurors couldn’t reach unanimous verdicts.

Kavanaugh noted that Evans had removed 41 of the 42 prospective black jurors over the six trials.

Flowers filed a lawsuit in 2021 against Evans and three investigators who worked with the district attorney. The suit claimed Evans and the investigators engaged in misconduct, including “pressuring witnesses to fabricate claims about seeing Mr. Flowers in particular locations on the day of the murders” and ignoring other possible suspects.

Earlier that year, a judge ordered the state of Mississippi to pay Flowers $500,000 for wrongful imprisonment — the maximum under a state law that allows up to $50,000 a year for 10 years.

Evans retired in 2023 after more than 30 years as district attorney. His jury selection tactics had been scrutinized for years.

Flowers’ name is “etched into U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence — about what it means to fight for a fair trial free from racial bias in the selection of jurors,” Flowers’ legal team said. “And also for that, but for so many other reasons, his name is etched into our memories, too — professional and personal. We will miss him.”

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Williams is a member of AP’s Race & Ethnicity team. He reported from Detroit.