Curtis Flowers dies at 56

The Mississippi man who spent over two decades in prison after being wrongfully accused of a 1996 quadruple murder has died.

Montgomery County Coroner Allan Pratt confirmed that Curtis Flowers, 56, was found dead Wednesday. Officials have not yet released additional details surrounding his cause of death.

Flowers’ case gained national prominence as one of the most remarkable sagas of prosecutorial misconduct in modern legal history. He was tried six separate times by former District Attorney Doug Evans for the July 1996 fatal shootings of four people at Tardy Furniture in Winona, Mississippi.

Over more than two decades, Flowers consistently maintained his innocence. Courts repeatedly had his convictions overturned on appeal due to judicial errors and prosecutorial bias. In June 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his final conviction in a 7-2 ruling, finding that the prosecutor had unconstitutionally excluded Black jurors from the trial.

Flowers was released on bail in late 2019 after spending more than 22 years behind bars. In September 2020, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch officially dropped all remaining charges against Flowers, confirming the state would not pursue a seventh trial.

The investigative podcast In the Dark played a central role in bringing Flowers’ case to light, uncovering critical flaws in the state’s evidence, key witness recantations, and a clear pattern of racial bias in jury selection.

In 2021, a state judge awarded Flowers $500,000 under Mississippi’s wrongful incarceration statute—the maximum allowable amount under state law—to be paid in $50,000 annual installments over ten years.