Curtis Flowers Dies at 56 After Landmark Supreme Court Ruling

Curtis Flowers, a Mississippi man whose repeated murder trials became a landmark case involving racial discrimination in jury selection, died at his home in Winona at age 56 on Wednesday, October 7, 2026. His family confirmed his death through attorney Rob McDuff, who told The Associated Press on Thursday that no official cause had been established.

Flowers spent more than 22 years in prison, including time on death row, after being convicted in connection with the July 1996 shooting deaths of four people at Tardy Furniture in Winona. The US Supreme Court overturned his conviction and death sentence in 2019, ruling that prosecutors had unconstitutionally excluded Black prospective jurors from his sixth trial. Mississippi dropped the charges in September 2020.

According to CBS News, the victims were the store's owner, a bookkeeper, a delivery worker and a 16-year-old. Flowers had briefly worked at the store before his arrest in January 1997. The murder weapon was never recovered, and investigators found no DNA or fingerprints linking him to the killings, CBS News reported.

Flowers faced six trials under District Attorney Doug Evans. Three convictions were overturned on appeal, including cases involving prosecutorial misconduct and racial discrimination, while two other trials ended in hung juries. His sixth trial, held in 2010, resulted in a death sentence after a jury comprising 11 White members and one Black member convicted him.

In the Supreme Court's 7-2 decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh concluded that the prosecution had repeatedly sought to exclude Black people from the jury pool. Court records showed that Evans struck 41 of 42 prospective Black jurors across Flowers' six trials, according to reporting by CNN and The Guardian.

Flowers remained imprisoned for about six months after the Supreme Court ruling because the indictment was still in place. A judge granted him bond, and he was released in December 2019. His case subsequently became a prominent example in national discussions about racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.

Reflecting on his release, Flowers described the end of his imprisonment as freedom from a prolonged injustice.

"Today, I am finally free from the injustice that left me locked in a box for nearly 23 years," Flowers said in a statement. "I've been asked if I ever thought this day would come. I have been blessed with a family that never gave up on me and with them by my side, I knew it would."

The case also received extensive attention from journalists at American Public Media's investigative podcast In the Dark. According to CBS News, their investigation prompted witnesses, including one who had claimed Flowers confessed, to recant their accounts. The reporting also examined court data showing that White jurors made up 61 of the 72 jurors who served across Flowers' trials, and all 61 voted to convict him.

Flowers pursued further legal action in 2021, suing Evans and three investigators over alleged misconduct. The lawsuit accused them of pressuring witnesses to fabricate accounts placing Flowers at particular locations on the day of the murders and of disregarding other possible suspects. These allegations were claims in the lawsuit, not findings established in the supplied reports.

Also in 2021, a judge ordered Mississippi to pay Flowers $500,000 for wrongful imprisonment, the maximum compensation available under a state law allowing up to $50,000 annually for 10 years. Evans retired in 2023 after more than three decades as district attorney.

Flowers' sister, Priscilla Flowers-Ward, told The New York Times that he had been suffering from advanced diabetes and that the family was awaiting an autopsy to determine the cause of death. The Associated Press reported that no cause had been announced by Thursday.

Flowers' legal team, which represented him for more than two decades, remembered him as both a client and a friend, emphasizing the lasting significance of his fight against racial bias in jury selection. His death comes more than six years after Mississippi dismissed the charges that had kept him entangled in the state's criminal justice system.