Curtis Flowers, Mississippi man whose death sentence was overturned after six trials, dies at 56

Curtis Flowers, the Mississippi man who was tried six times for the same quadruple murder before the US Supreme Court overturned his conviction in a landmark civil rights ruling, has died at the age of 56.

His family confirmed that he died on Wednesday at his home in Winona, Mississippi, according to his attorney, Rob McDuff. No cause of death has been released.

Flowers' fight against a relentless local prosecutor became one of the most notorious stories of wrongful conviction in modern American history. He spent nearly 23 years in prison, much of it on death row, before finally walking free.

The furniture store murders

The case began on a July morning in 1996, when four people were shot in the head execution-style at Tardy Furniture in the small city of Winona. The victims were the store’s owner, a bookkeeper, a delivery driver, and a 16-year-old employee.

Flowers, who had briefly worked at the store for three days that summer, was arrested several months later in Texas. He had no prior criminal record.

Prosecutors portrayed him as a disgruntled former employee seeking revenge. Yet the state’s case was incredibly thin. The murder weapon was never found, and there was no DNA or fingerprint evidence linking Flowers to the crime scene.

Six trials by the same prosecutor

For over two decades, District Attorney Doug Evans pursued Flowers with singular focus, putting him on trial six times.

The first three trials ended in convictions and death sentences, but all were overturned on appeal because of Evans' misconduct, which included misrepresenting evidence and racially profiling prospective jurors. The fourth and fifth trials ended in hung juries.

In 2010, during the sixth trial, Evans secured another conviction and death sentence. He did so by striking five Black prospective jurors, resulting in a panel of 11 white jurors and one Black juror. All 11 white jurors voted to convict.

The extraordinary case began to unravel after reporters for the American Public Media podcast In the Dark launched a deep investigation. They revealed that key prosecution witnesses had fabricated their stories, and analysed decades of local court records. The data proved Evans had a systematic history of excluding Black citizens from juries. Across all six trials, Evans had struck 41 of the 42 Black potential jurors he encountered.

The Supreme Court ruling and freedom

In June 2019, the US Supreme Court threw out Flowers' conviction in a 7-2 decision. Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh stated that Evans had engaged in a "relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals" to secure an all-white jury.

Six months later, in December 2019, Flowers was released on bail, leaving prison for the first time in more than 22 years. "I felt like I was floating," he said later.

The state of Mississippi officially dropped all charges against him in September 2020.

"Today, I am finally free from the injustice that left me locked in a box for nearly twenty-three years," Flowers said in a statement at the time. "I have been blessed with a family that never gave up on me."

In 2021, a judge ordered Mississippi to pay Flowers $500,000, the maximum allowed under state law for wrongful imprisonment. Flowers also filed a civil lawsuit against Evans and three investigators, accusing them of misconduct and witness pressure. Evans retired in 2023.

On Thursday, Flowers’ legal team said they were honoured to have called him both a client and a friend. "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," they said.