Top US court troubled by case of black man tried six times

The US Supreme Court appeared vexed on Wednesday by the case of a black man who was tried six separate times for the same crime in a process tainted by charges of racism.

Associate Justice Samuel Alito, one of the five conservative justices on the nine-member bench, said he found aspects of the case of death row inmate Curtis Flowers "troubling." Flowers, 48, was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to death for the July 1996 murders of four people in a furniture store in Winona, Mississippi, where he had briefly worked until being fired.

Flowers was tried five separate times for the crime before his 2010 conviction and has spent nearly half his life behind bars.

Three convictions were thrown out on appeal because of prosecutorial misconduct and two trials ended in a hung jury.

The Supreme Court is not examining the guilt or innocence of Flowers but whether the district attorney deliberately sought to keep black people off the jury in his most recent trial.

While prosecutors and defense lawyers are allowed to use what are called peremptory challenges to eliminate potential jurors they are not allowed to do so on the basis of race.

Lawyers for Flowers argued that district attorney Doug Evans, who prosecuted all six cases and is white, rejected potential black jurors in what amounted to racial discrimination.

US law forbids someone from being tried twice for the same offense, but since the cases were eventually inconclusive Flowers could be tried again.

During the 2010 trial which resulted in Flowers' conviction and death sentence, Evans rejected five of six potential black jurors.