(Adds background on case, paragraphs 8-11)
By Lawrence Hurley
WASHINGTON, June 21 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court, confronting racial bias in the American criminal justice system, on Friday threw out a black Mississippi death row inmate's conviction in his sixth trial for a 1996 quadruple murder conviction, finding that a prosecutor unlawfully blocked black potential jurors.
The court, in a 7-2 ruling, found that the actions of the prosecutor violated the right of Curtis Flowers, 49, to receive a fair trial as required by the U.S. Constitution. While the court sided with Flowers, its ruling does not preclude Mississippi from putting him on trial for a seventh time.
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing on behalf of the majority, wrote that the prosecutors sought to strike black jurors through all of Flowers' six trials. Prosecutors "engaged in dramatically disparate questioning of black and white prospective jurors" at his sixth trial, Kavanaugh added.
Conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented.
In U.S. trials, prosecutors and defense lawyers can dismiss - or "strike" - a certain number of prospective jurors during the jury selection process without stating a reason. Some prosecutors, including in Southern states like Mississippi, have been accused over the decades of trying to ensure predominately white juries for trials of black defendants to help win convictions.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that people cannot be excluded from a jury because of their race, based on the right to a fair trial under the U.S. Constitution's Sixth Amendment and the 14th Amendment promise of equal protection under the law.
Flowers was appealing his 2010 conviction - in his sixth trial - on charges of murdering four people at the Tardy Furniture store where he previously worked in the small central Mississippi city of Winona. In that trial, there were 11 white jurors and one black juror.
His lawyers accused long-serving Montgomery County District Attorney Doug Evans, who is white, of engaging in a pattern of removing black jurors that indicated an unlawful discriminatory motive. Evans has given non-racial reasons for striking black potential jurors.
Flowers was found guilty in his first three trials - the first one with an all-white jury and the next two with just one black juror - but those convictions were thrown out by Mississippi's top court. Several blacks jurors participated in the fourth and fifth trials, which ended without a verdict because the jury both times failed to produce a unanimous decision.
Prosecutors have said Flowers was upset with the store owner for firing him and withholding his paycheck to cover the cost of batteries he previously had damaged. He was convicted of killing store owner Bertha Tardy, 59; bookkeeper Carmen Rigby, 45; delivery worker Robert Golden, 42; and part-time employee Derrick Stewart, 16. All except Golden were white.
Thomas, the only black member of the Supreme Court, asked his first questions during an oral argument in three years when the case came before the justices in March. His question centered on whether defense lawyers for Flowers during his trials had excluded white potential jurors.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
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