In a podcast from ‘The Murder Sheet’ (available below), we are introduced to Willie Manning’s legal team to hear their insights into Willie’s cases. It is a sobering experience. We hear not only that incentivized witnesses led to false trial testimony in both of Willie’s cases, but that this lying witness pattern is not uncommon in death penalty cases.

David Voisin believes that “the appearance of jailhouse informants as trial witnesses should constitute a big red flag”. Krissy Nobile agrees that the use of desperate, very incentivized witnesses happens in many, many cases.

In Willie’s ongoing case, false witness testimony was not the only factor that produced his wrongful conviction: the hair and ballistics evidence was fundamentally flawed. Again, we hear that faulty forensics appear in other death penalty cases. David Voisin sums up cases relying on dubious forensics and incentivized witnesses as a “great tragedy”.

We hear also of the racism that is often at play. For instance, in Willie’s cases, as in other cases where the defendant is African American, black jurors were removed by the prosecutor with flimsy excuses. Overlaid with racism, and underpinned by a shortage of resources for a proper defense investigation, it is no surprise that many death row inmates are eventually exonerated.

Krissy Nobile speaks for the whole team when she says, “It’s not unusual at all [to be exonerated from death row]. It should be shocking how often it happens… These issues that have come up in both of the Manning’s cases come up in other cases. And so while it’s not shocking to see this, it is still appalling to see it.”

And so it is.