Curtis Flowers, tried six times for the same killings, dies aged 56

Curtis Flowers, the Mississippi man tried six times for the same murders before the US Supreme Court threw out his conviction and death sentence, has died. He was 56. His family confirmed he died Wednesday at his home in Mississippi, his attorney Rob McDuff told The Associated Press on Thursday. No cause of death was given.

Flowers was 26 when he was arrested after the July 1996 shooting deaths of four people at the Tardy Furniture store in Winona, Mississippi. He spent over 22 years in prison, much of it on death row, while District Attorney Doug Evans prosecuted him repeatedly. In 2019 the court ruled 7-2 in Flowers v. Mississippi that the removal of Black prospective jurors had deprived him of a fair trial; Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, said Evans had struck 41 of the 42 prospective Black jurors over the six trials.

The 2010 sixth trial ended in a death sentence from 11 white jurors and one Black juror, after Evans struck five Black prospective jurors. Flowers was released in December 2019 after a judge set bond, and Mississippi dropped all charges in September 2020. A judge later ordered the state to pay him $500,000 for wrongful imprisonment, the maximum under a law allowing $50,000 a year for ten years. Evans retired in 2023 after more than 30 years as district attorney. His legal team said its members were privileged to call him a client and honoured to call him a friend.