U.S. Supreme Court overturns Curtis Flowers conviction possibly leading to seventh trial

The U.S. Supreme Court today tossed out the latest murder conviction of a Mississippi man who has been on trial six times for the same crime.

Curtis Flowers, 49, was convicted in 2010 of capital murder in the July 16, 1996 shooting deaths of four people in the Tardy Furniture store in Winona, Miss. He is currently on death row at Parchman for that conviction.

Prosecutor Doug Evans has sought the death penalty for Flowers in five of six trials he has brought. Two of the trials, the fourth and fifth, ended in mistrials. Four resulted in convictions; however, each was later overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court for prosecutorial misconduct, racial bias by the prosecutor in jury selection and other serious errors. In the fifth trial, an alternate juror was charged with perjury.

Evans is the district attorney for Mississippi’s Fifth Circuit Court District, which covers Attala, Carroll, Choctaw, Grenada, Montgomery, Webster and Winston counties.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision today says the removal of black prospective jurors violated Flower’s rights.