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Curtis Flowers, a Black man wrongfully convicted after six trials for the same murders, died at 56. He was freed in 2019 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled his rights were violated.
Curtis Flowers, a Mississippi man who was wrongfully convicted after being tried six times for the same killings by the same prosecutor, has died. He was 56. His family confirmed he died Wednesday at his home in Winona, Mississippi, according to attorney Rob McDuff, who was part of Flowers' legal team. No cause of death was given.
Flowers' legal struggles began in July 1996, when four people were shot execution-style inside Tardy Furniture in Winona. Flowers had briefly worked at the store but was let go after three days. He was arrested in January 1997 in Texas, where he had moved to live with his sister. He had no prior criminal history.
The murder weapon was never found, and there was no DNA or fingerprints linking Flowers to the crime. Despite this, he was tried six times by District Attorney Doug Evans. In the first trial, an all-White jury convicted him after just an hour of deliberation, and he was sentenced to death. His conviction was overturned, but he faced five more trials.
According to McDuff, the first three convictions were overturned "because of the prosecutor's misrepresentation of the evidence to the jury and because of his discrimination in the selection of the jury." Two other trials ended in mistrials. In the sixth trial in 2010, Evans secured a conviction, and Flowers returned to death row.
An investigation by American Public Media's podcast "In the Dark" analyzed court data and found that Evans had a history of excluding Black people from juries at a disproportionate rate. Across all of Flowers' trials, 61 of the 72 jurors were White, and all 61 voted to convict. Kavanaugh noted that Evans removed 41 of the 42 prospective Black jurors over the six trials.
In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 7-2 decision that Evans and the state of Mississippi had violated Flowers' constitutional rights. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that there was a "relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals." Flowers was released on bail in December 2019, leaving jail for the first time in 23 years.
"And I'm telling you, I felt like I was floating. I was just ready to go," Flowers told CBS News in 2021.
Mississippi dropped charges against Flowers in September 2020. In a statement, Flowers said, "Today, I am finally free from the injustice that left me locked in a box for nearly twenty three years."
In 2021, Flowers filed a lawsuit against Evans and three investigators, alleging misconduct, including "pressuring witnesses to fabricate claims about seeing Mr. Flowers in particular locations on the day of the murders." The suit sought $500,000 for wrongful imprisonment, the maximum allowed under state law. Evans retired in 2023 after more than 30 years as district attorney.
Flowers' case highlighted systemic issues in jury selection and prosecutorial conduct. His legal team stated that his 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." The case remains a significant example of how repeated trials and biased jury selection can lead to wrongful convictions.
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This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.
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