UPDATE 1-U.S. Supreme Court tosses black Mississippi inmate's murder conviction in racial case

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 the 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 defence 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.