WINONA, Miss. — Curtis Flowers, the Black Mississippi man who spent more than 22 years imprisoned and faced six trials before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his death sentence in a landmark jury-discrimination case, has died at age 56.
Flowers was found dead Wednesday, Oct. 7, at his family home in Winona, Montgomery County Coroner Allan Pratt confirmed. A cause of death had not been released, and Pratt told Mississippi Today that the death remained under investigation.
Flowers was arrested in 1997 in connection with the killing of four people at Tardy Furniture in Winona the previous year. He maintained his innocence throughout a prosecution that produced four convictions later overturned and two trials that ended without unanimous verdicts.
His sixth trial in 2010 resulted in a death sentence. In 2019, however, the Supreme Court reversed the conviction in a 7–2 decision, finding that prosecutors had intentionally excluded Black people from the jury. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that then-District Attorney Doug Evans had removed 41 of 42 prospective Black jurors across Flowers’ six trials, according to The Associated Press.
Flowers was released on bond in December 2019. Mississippi prosecutors dismissed all charges with prejudice in September 2020, preventing the state from trying him a seventh time. In 2021, a judge awarded him $500,000 under Mississippi’s wrongful-imprisonment compensation law.
The case became nationally known through American Public Media’s “In the Dark” podcast, which examined the evidence and the prosecution’s pattern of excluding Black jurors. Flowers later filed a civil lawsuit alleging prosecutorial and investigative misconduct.
Flowers’ legal team remembered him not only for the case but for his character after returning home. In a statement reported by AP, his attorneys said they felt honored to have known him as both a client and friend, describing the light he shared through church singing, fishing and time with family.
Mississippi Today reported that Flowers had lived with diabetes during his imprisonment and had limited access to vocational training while on death row. His former attorney Andre de Gruy said Flowers stayed close to his family after his release and cared for his father until his father’s death last year. No official connection between Flowers’ diabetes and his death had been announced.
Flowers leaves behind a daughter, grandchildren and siblings. His case remains an important marker in the continuing fight against racial discrimination in American jury selection.
