Curtis Flowers died at the age of 56 after spending nearly two decades in custody for crimes he did not commit

Curtis Flowers, a Black man from Mississippi who was convicted of four murders and held in custody for nearly two decades, has died at the age of 56. His body was discovered on Wednesday, and the cause of death was not disclosed. The circumstances of his death are being investigated by the Montgomery County medical examiner.

Flowers’ case began on July 16, 1996, when the owner of a furniture store in Winona and three employees were fatally shot. The district attorney prosecuted him six times for the same murders, while Flowers consistently maintained his innocence. The trials ended either without a unanimous verdict or with convictions that were later overturned.

At the sixth trial, Flowers was convicted and sent to death row. In June 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction, finding that the prosecutor had intentionally excluded Black people from the jury. Flowers was released on bail in December 2019, and in September 2020 the charges were permanently dropped.

Mississippi was later ordered to pay him $500,000 in compensation. His lawyers described him as a gentle man who endured extraordinary trials.