What we know
What we know: Curtis Flowers, a Black man whose death sentence was tossed by Supreme Court, dies in Mississippi
Compiled Oct 8
What we know
- Curtis Flowers died Wednesday at his home in Mississippi at age 56
- He spent more than 22 years in prison, including time on death row, before the U.S. Supreme Court threw out his conviction and death sentence
- Flowers was tried six times for the July 1996 shooting deaths of four people inside a Winona, Mississippi furniture store
- In 2019 the Supreme Court ruled 7-2, with Justice Kavanaugh writing that removal of Black prospective jurors deprived Flowers of a fair trial
- Flowers was released in December 2019 after a judge set bond, and Mississippi dropped charges in September 2020
- A judge ordered Mississippi to pay Flowers $500,000 for wrongful imprisonment
What we don’t know yet
- No cause of death was given for Flowers' death
Open questions
- What caused Flowers' death?
- What became of the 2021 lawsuit Flowers filed against Doug Evans and investigators?
- Was anyone else ever charged in connection with the 1996 killings?
Drawn from the Associated Press report. “What we don’t know” lists only what the reporting itself flags as unresolved.