Original reporting · NBC News (Associated Press)
What happened
Curtis Flowers, a Black man who spent more than 22 years in prison in Mississippi and was on death row, died Wednesday at his home, his attorney Rob McDuff told the Associated Press, in a report carried by NBC News. He was 56. McDuff, who was part of his legal team, said no cause of death was given, the AP reported. The Montgomery County coroner told Mississippi Today that the death is an “ongoing investigation.”
According to the AP, Flowers was 26 when he was arrested, several months after four people were shot and killed inside a furniture store in Winona in July 1996. Prosecutors described him as a former employee who wanted revenge on the owner who had fired him. Mississippi Today reported that he maintained his innocence throughout. District Attorney Doug Evans tried him six times. Four convictions were overturned and two trials ended in mistrials, the AP reported.
In 2019 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the removal of Black prospective jurors had deprived Flowers of a fair trial, the AP reported, in a decision written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh noted that Evans had removed 41 of 42 Black prospective jurors across the six trials, according to the AP, and the 2010 jury that sentenced Flowers to death had 11 white jurors and one Black juror. CBS News reported that the podcast investigation “In the Dark” led witnesses to recant, including one who had said Flowers confessed.
The AP reported that Flowers stayed in prison six months after the ruling because he was still under indictment, and was released on bond in December 2019. Mississippi Today reported that Evans stepped aside, the state attorney general’s office took over, and a judge dismissed the charges in September 2020. “Today, I am finally free from the injustice that left me locked in a box for nearly twenty three years,” Flowers said then, according to the AP, crediting “a family that never gave up on me.” In 2021 he sued Evans and three investigators, alleging misconduct that included pressuring witnesses, the AP reported. The coverage reviewed did not say how that suit was resolved.
Our reflection
Start with the arithmetic, because it is easy to rush past. Curtis Flowers went in at 26. He came home in December 2019 and died fewer than seven years later. A man who spent more than two decades in what he called a box got a little under seven years outside it.
There are other wounds in this story. Four families in Winona buried people they loved in 1996, and they were owed a trial that could stand. Six trials later, none had. Then there are the 41 Black people who answered a jury summons and were sent home. Their names are not in the headlines. Each was turned away from the plain civic work of judging a neighbor fairly.
Jesus knows that room. Mark tells us the council went looking for testimony against him and the witnesses could not get their stories to agree (Mark 14:55 to 59). The outcome was settled before anyone took the stand. He was condemned, beaten and crucified, and he prayed for the people doing it. Then came the part no rigged court ever plans for. In Acts 2:23 to 24, Peter tells Jerusalem that they put him to death and God raised him up. The empty tomb is God overturning a verdict.
Amos preached to people who kept their worship calendar full while the poor were turned aside in the gate, the place where the town held court (Amos 5:12). He did not prescribe a better service. He said maintain justice in the courts.
I will not guess at what was in one prosecutor’s heart. The Supreme Court judged the pattern, and that is enough. My own heart I can speak to. Every one of us keeps a jury box in the chest. We seat the people we already trust and strike the rest before they open their mouths: the young man with a record, the coworker with an accent, the relative who hurt us in 2009. Jesus said what defiles a person comes from inside (Mark 7:20 to 23). Bias in a courtroom starts as a habit in a heart. When the Holy Spirit shows you yours, that is conviction. It is meant to lead you to repent and seat people again, and shame has no part in it.
Change came here because people refused to quit. Reporters kept digging until witnesses took back what they had said. Lawyers stayed for decades. A family, in Flowers’s own words, never gave up on him. Ordinary people can do that kind of work. Answer the jury summons instead of dodging it; a jury can only reflect a community that shows up. And when someone comes home after years inside, the months after release are when the risk is highest and support usually ends. That is why We The Revolt stays beside young people for twelve months after they come home.
Pray for the Flowers family this week, and for the four families in Winona who have carried 1996 for thirty years. Then take one of the steps below.
Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts.
Amos 5:15
Your move
Source: NBC News (Associated Press), “Curtis Flowers, a Black man whose death sentence was tossed out by Supreme Court, dies in Mississippi”