Curtis Flowers, Black Man Who Was Wrongfully Imprisoned, Dies At 56

Curtis Flowers, a man who became one of the faces of wrongful incarceration, died Wednesday at the age of 56. 

The New York Times reports that his sister, Priscilla Flowers-Ward, said that Flowers was suffering from advanced diabetes and the family is still waiting for an autopsy to learn the exact cause of death. Flowers spent 23 years in a Mississippi prison after being convicted of the murder of four people in 1996. 

The owner and three employees at a furniture store Flowers was fired from were killed in a murder-homicide. Prosecutors only really had circumstantial evidence tying Flowers to the crime, arguing that the murders were retaliation for losing his job. 

From The New York Times:

The white district attorney, Doug Evans, who tried all of Mr. Flowers’s six cases, spent two decades employing the same tactic: ensuring that few or no Black residents in the majority-Black county were seated on Mr. Flowers’s juries.

Across the half-dozen trials, 61 of the 72 jurors were white. Two of the prosecutions ended in mistrials, and four in convictions that were overturned on appeal.

Mr. Flowers’s ordeal gained broader attention through a 2018 podcast, “In the Dark,” which identified holes in the prosecution’s case. One witness who had testified at four of Mr. Flowers’s trials, and who had said that Mr. Flowers had confessed to the crime in jail, recanted to the podcast reporters.

The Supreme Court overturned Flowers’s sentence in 2019 in a 7-2 ruling. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that the state of Mississippi had pursued a “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals.”

Do you know how racist you have to be for this Supreme Court to call you out on it? 

“Today, I am finally free from the injustice that left me locked in a box for nearly 23 years,” Flowers said in a statement after his release. “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.”

Unsurprisingly, Evans never admitted any prosecutorial misconduct or apologized to Flowers for the ordeal he put him through. 

“I have personally prosecuted the defendant in all six of his prior trials,” Evans said in a court filing at the time. “While I remain confident in both the investigation and jury verdicts in this matter, I have come to the conclusion that my continued involvement will prevent the families from obtaining justice and from the defendant being held responsible for his actions.”

Mississippi dropped his charges in 2020 and, in 2021, agreed to pay him $500,000 over 10 years. I hope that money will still be paid out to his daughter and grandchildren. 

While I’m glad Flowers didn’t die behind bars, it’s hard not to feel anything but immense sadness about this. 56 is not that old, and Flowers spent half his life behind bars for a crime he was exonerated of. Think of how much time he missed with his kids and grandkids. They only had six good years with him before he ultimately passed. 

Rest in power, Curtis Flowers. You deserved far better than what you got. 

SEE ALSO:

61% of People Exonerated In 2023 Were Black

Exonerated Man Calvin Duncan Wins New Orleans Criminal Clerk Election