Curtis Flowers, the Mississippi man who spent 23 years in prison — most of it on death row — before prosecutors dropped all charges against him in 2019, has died. He was 56.

Flowers was convicted six times in connection with the 1996 shooting deaths of four people at a Winona, Mississippi, furniture store. Each conviction was overturned on appeal. He maintained his innocence throughout, and no jury that included a Black juror ever convicted him.

His case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019, when the justices ruled 7-2 in Flowers v. Mississippi that District Attorney Doug Evans had violated the Constitution by systematically excluding Black jurors from the trials. Prosecutors dropped the charges four months later, and Flowers walked out of the Winston-Choctaw County Regional Correctional Facility a free man.

Flowers was born in 1968 and grew up in Winona, a small town in north-central Mississippi. He was arrested at 27 and tried six times over more than two decades. Three of his convictions came in trials where Evans struck every Black prospective juror from the pool. In total, Evans removed 41 of 42 Black jurors across the first four trials, according to court records cited by the Supreme Court.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, finding that Evans' conduct showed "a relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals." The ruling marked one of the most significant federal decisions on racial discrimination in jury selection in decades.

After his release, Flowers worked as a truck driver and lived in Mississippi. He filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Evans and the city of Winona, seeking damages for what his attorneys described as a racially motivated prosecution. The lawsuit was still pending at the time of his death.

Flowers' case drew national attention after the podcast "In the Dark" investigated the prosecution in 2018 and 2019, uncovering evidence that had not been presented at trial. The investigation raised questions about the reliability of the state's case, including the credibility of its key witness.

He is survived by family members in Mississippi. Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.