It is over a year since Willie Manning asked the Mississippi Supreme Court to reconsider its refusal to let him present newly discovered evidence to the circuit court. In his Motion for Rehearing he argued that the court erred in that it fragmented its scrutiny of the evidence, instead of considering the cumulative impact of the many instances of unreliable and false evidence. He asked for an evidentiary hearing because of the recantation of the key witness, Earl Jordan. And he invited the court to view his case as part of a pattern of the “numerous wrongful convictions stemming from the same judicial district and prosecutor” as his current case.

The document concludes:
“The Court should not be blind to the complete erosion of the reliability of the State’s case at trial—or the injustice that has occurred to Manning.”

Perhaps the previous blindness of the court is linked to Willie being African American, and the victims in the case being white. As a new ACLU report states:
“Even when factual innocence seems manifestly apparent, true exonerations remain hard to come by for many Black men, and especially those wrongfully convicted of killing white victims. “

The report also sheds light on Willie’s slow progress in establishing his innocence:
“…it takes Black death row exonerees over four years longer on average to be cleared than their white counterparts.”

Nineteen years ago Clive Stafford Smith wrote:
“It is a platitude to suggest that as the Christmas season approaches we should consider those less fortunate than ourselves, but if we did Willie would certainly qualify.”*

His words are as true now as ever.

*Next week Clive Stafford Smith will be lecturing on Donald Trump and the Death Penalty. The lecture can be viewed online as well as in person in London, England. Clive was once one of Willie’s attorneys and was very aware of the discrepancies in both his cases. If you wish to watch his lecture, on Thursday, December 4 at 18.00 GMT (the nineteenth anniversary of the publication of his article about Willie) you can register here.