Justice Thomas: Court’s decision “distorts the record of this case, eviscerates our standard of review, and vacates four murder convictions because the State struck a juror who would have been stricken by any competent attorney.”
Supreme Court strikes down murder convictions on grounds of racial bias
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court struck down a black inmate’s murder convictions and death sentence because the white man who prosecuted him on behalf of Mississippi unconstitutionally excluded blacks from the jury at his final trial and at others that preceded it.
Curtis Giovanni Flowers (pictured above), 49, was condemned to death for murdering four employees of the now-closed Tardy Furniture store during a 1996 robbery in Winona, Mississippi, a small town with a population of 5,000.