JACKSON, Miss. — Curtis Flowers, a Black man who spent more than 22 years in prison, much of it on death row, before the U.S. Supreme Court threw out his conviction, has died at 56, The Associated Press reported.
Flowers died Wednesday at his home in Mississippi, attorney Rob McDuff said. No cause was given.
He was arrested at 26 in the July 1996 shooting deaths of four people at a furniture store in Winona, Mississippi, and was tried six times.
In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the removal of Black prospective jurors denied him a fair trial. Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted the prosecutor had struck 41 of 42 Black prospective jurors over the six trials.
Flowers was released in December 2019, and the state dropped the charges in September 2020. A judge later ordered Mississippi to pay him $500,000 for wrongful imprisonment.
His legal team said his name is “etched into U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence” on the right to a jury free from racial bias.
Sources: Associated Press via KTAR News. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: author of article is Edward C. Mayes; photographer not specified / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
