Excluding Black Jurors in Curtis Flowers Case Violated Constitution, Supreme Court Rules – The New York Times

Mr. Evans said he excluded black potential jurors because they knew witnesses or members of Mr. Flowers’s family, had been sued by the furniture store where the murders took place, had qualms about the death penalty or had turned up late for jury selection.

Justice Kavanaugh said that some of those reasons were false and that Mr. Evans did not ask detailed questions of white jurors with comparable connections to the case.

“When considered with other evidence of discrimination,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote, “a series of factually inaccurate explanations for striking black prospective jurors can be telling. So it is here.”

In ruling for Mr. Flowers, Justice Kavanaugh said he was merely applying settled legal principles. “We break no new legal ground,” he wrote.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that the case was “likely one of a kind.”

Mr. Flowers’s case was the subject of season-long examination by the podcast “In the Dark,” which raised substantial questions about his guilt. In February, the podcast won a George Polk award, a prestigious journalism prize, for its work about the case.

Justice Thomas wrote that he was concerned that the Supreme Court had agreed to hear the case because it had “received a fair amount of media attention.”