Curtis Flowers Dies at 56, Ending Legal Battle Over Jury Bias

Curtis Flowers died this month at the age of 56. The death ends a decades long legal fight that centered on racial bias in jury selection in central Mississippi. Flowers was a Black man who was convicted four times for the 1996 murders of four people at a furniture store in Winona where he had previously worked.

Doug Evans, the white district attorney who handled all six of Flowers cases, employed a consistent tactic over two decades. He ensured that few or no Black residents were seated on the juries. This was notable because Black residents formed the majority in the county. Evans achieved this goal through extensive questioning and peremptory challenges.

The legal struggle reached its peak in 2019 when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Flowers capital conviction. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion. The Court found that the state had made a relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals. In the sixth trial, prosecutors asked 145 questions to five Black prospective jurors who were struck. By contrast, they asked only 12 questions to the 11 white jurors who were seated.

Flowers was released from prison in December 2019 after nearly 23 years behind bars. His release followed the Supreme Court ruling that declared the exclusion of Black jurors unconstitutional. The case became a national symbol of how prosecutors might use legal tools to shape juries by race despite existing protections.

The legal history of jury selection in the United States is marked by shifting standards. In 1880, the Supreme Court ruled in Strauder v. West Virginia that laws barring Black people from serving as jurors were unconstitutional. However, in 1965, the Court decided Swain v. Alabama, which made it much harder for defendants to prove racial bias. That decision required showing a systematic pattern across multiple cases, a burden many found nearly impossible to meet.

In 1986, the Court overruled the Swain standard in Batson v. Kentucky. The Batson decision allowed a defendant to establish a prima facie case of discrimination based on peremptory strikes. This shifted the burden to the state to provide a race neutral reason for excluding jurors. Justice Byron White, who had authored the earlier Swain opinion, concurred that the time had come to change the rule.

Despite these legal shifts, critics argue that prosecutors often find new ways to exclude minorities. Flowers died weeks ago, closing the chapter on one of the most prominent modern cases regarding this issue. The Supreme Court recently weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in a 6 3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais this year. That decision further altered the legal landscape for protecting minority voting rights.