The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overturned a 2010 conviction in the case of Curtis Flowers, a black man on death row in Mississippi for the 1996 murder of four people in a furniture store.

In a 7-2 decision authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the high court sided with Curtis lawyers, who argued that District Attorney Doug Evans, who is white, excluded potential black jurors on the basis of race in the 2010 trial. The defense attorneys said the Mississippi Supreme Court failed to properly apply U.S. Supreme Court precedent in determining whether people were unconstitutionally kept off a jury on the basis of race.

Evans has attempted to convict Flowers six times over the years: in 1997, 1999, 2004, 2007, 2008 and 2010. Two trials the only ones with more than one black juror resulted in hung juries. The Mississippi Supreme Court overturned the three earlier convictions on the basis of prosecutorial misconduct, including that Evans improperly excluded potential black jurors.

But the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the 2010 conviction, and Flowers was sentenced to death. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Flowers v. Mississippi , with both conservative and liberal justices pointing to the troubling nature of the case .

In Fridays opinion, Kavanaugh cited the extraordinary facts of this case as the justices primary consideration in their ruling.