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 overturned his conviction and death sentence, has died. He was 56 years old.
Flowers’ family confirmed that he died Wednesday at his home in Mississippi, attorney Rob McDuff told The Associated Press on 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 at a Winona, Mississippi, furniture store.
At the time, prosecutors described him as a disgruntled former employee who was seeking revenge against the store 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 murders.
Flowers was tried six times for these murders. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the high court’s 7-2 decision in 2019 that the dismissal of prospective Black jurors deprived Flowers of a fair trial.
During the sixth trial in 2010, Flowers was sentenced to death. Eleven white jurors and one black juror considered the case after District Attorney Doug Evans struck five black potential jurors.
Flowers remained in jail for six months after the Supreme Court’s decision because he remained indicted. He was ultimately released in December 2019 after a judge set bail.
Mississippi dropped charges against Flowers in September 2020.
“Today, I am finally free from the injustice that left me locked in a box for almost 23 years,” Flowers said in a statement. “I was asked if I thought this day would come. I was lucky enough to have 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 in a statement Thursday that each member felt “privileged to have called him a client.”
“Later, in the years following his release and exoneration, we felt equally honored to consider 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 lasted more than 20 years. The files showed Evans’ “relentless and determined efforts to rid the jury” of black individuals, with the goal of an all-white jury, Kavanaugh wrote.
In previous trials, three convictions were thrown out, including one when the prosecutor wrongly excluded African Americans from the jury. During the second trial, the judge reprimanded Evans for hitting a juror because of his race. Two other trials ended when jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict.
Kavanaugh noted that Evans removed 41 of 42 potential black jurors during the six trials.
Flowers filed a lawsuit in 2021 against Evans and three investigators who worked with the prosecutor. The suit claimed that Evans and investigators engaged in misconduct, including “pressuring witnesses to make up allegations that they saw 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 state law that allows up to $50,000 a year for 10 years.
Evans retired in 2023 after more than 30 years as a prosecutor. His jury selection tactics had been under scrutiny for years.
Flowers’ name is “engraved in the jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court – on what it means to fight for a fair trial, free from racial bias in jury selection,” Flowers’ legal team said. “And also for this, but for so many other reasons, his name is also engraved in our memories – professional and personal. We will miss him.”
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