The Man in the Orange Jumpsuit

Posted on November 2, 2016 by Justice for Willie

Willie Manning’s name appears as number 153 on the list of death row exonerations published by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC); but because of another, unrelated capital conviction he is still behind bars on Mississippi’s death row. He remains “the man in the orange jumpsuit” who no one listens to, and no one believes.

It is good, then, that other death row exonerees are now free, and are now being believed. Their stories can promote the acceptance that those still on death row who claim innocence could also be telling the truth.

The name that precedes Willie’s on DPIC’s list is number 152, Anthony Ray Hinton, an African American man from Alabama, who was interviewed by The Guardian last month. The detective who arrested Hinton for robbery told him,
“I don’t care whether you did it or not. You will be convicted.”
When Hinton’s part in the robbery was disproved, he was charged with two unconnected murders instead. His appointed defense lawyer refused to believe he was innocent. It was only after spending 28 years on death row that the charges against Hinton were dismissed and he walked free.

The exoneration that immediately followed Willie’s is equally troubling. Number 154 on DPIC’s list is yet another African American man, Alfred Dewayne Brown, from Texas.  Writing last month also, Brown’s post-conviction lawyer describes how Brown’s girlfriend was intimidated by police into withdrawing her statement, which had supported Brown’s alibi. And potentially exculpatory records were found 3 years ago in the home garage of a Houston police detective who worked on the case.

Amazingly, both Hinton and Brown say they have no hatred for those whose actions condemned them. And Hinton has a message for anyone on death row who is innocent:
“Never give up hope.”
We have passed this message to Willie. We trust it will help him stay strong. And we hope it will not be long before he, too, is free to tell his story.

 

Posted in capital punishmant, criminal justice, death peanlty, Fly Manning, Injustice, innocence, Mississippi, USA, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Legal Challenges to Mississippi Executions

Posted on October 19, 2016 by Justice for Willie

Lawsuits about the sedative used in Mississippi’s execution protocol are, thankfully, preventing the state from resuming executions. 

Jim Craig, of the MacArthur Justice Center, represents three death row inmates who are challenging the use of midazolam as a sedative. They claim that midazolam both contravenes the state’s own requirements, and creates a substantial risk of serious harm and severe pain. 

In addition, Craig is fighting the states of Missouri, Georgia and Texas in court. He is asking them to divulge the source of their pentobarbital, the sedative which they use for executions. He argues that he needs this information in order to challenge Mississippi’s assertion that it cannot procure pentobarbital (Mississippi has, in the past, used pentobarbital as a sedative).

Another lawsuit challenges the legality of using any lethal injection drug that has been compounded from raw ingredients (the pentobarbital used by other states has probably been produced in this way).

We hope that these lawsuits are successful. And we are happy that, for now at least, the threat of executions does not hang over Mississippi’s death row. For now, Willie Manning will be spared the trauma of watching men being forcibly led off to die; his own brush with execution would make this all the more harrowing.

We are grateful for Craig’s persistence: for now, it is keeping inmates alive.

Posted in capital punishment, death penalty, execution drugs, executions, Fly Manning, lethal injection drugs, Mississippi, USA, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Death Penalty Losing its Grip

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Justice for Willie

Last week brought wonderful news for death penalty opponents – according to a Pew Research survey, fewer than half of Americans now favor using the death penalty!  Overall support for capital punishment has plummeted in the last 18 months, from 56% Americans supportive in March last year, to just 49% now, continuing an ongoing decline. Support is now at its lowest since 1972, when the US death penalty was suspended, before being reinstated in 1976.

The identified group that has the lowest support for capital punishment is African Americans (only 29% in favor).  No doubt many in this group understand only too well the death penalty’s connection with racist lynchings. Amongst Hispanic people, support is 36%; among white people it is 57%.

Democratic voters seem to have been the main drivers of opposition to the death penalty, with only 34% favoring the death penalty now (37 percentage points down from 71% in support 20 years ago), as opposed to 72% Republicans in favor of it now (just 15 points down from 87% supportive 20 years ago).

The death penalty has lost majority support and is continuing to lose its grip. We hope this good news has reached Willie Manning and the many others with death sentences across America. We hope it brings Willie some cheer. 

 

Posted in African American, capital punishmant, criminal justice, death penalty, Fly Manning, Mississippi, USA, Willie Manning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Jim Hood: undermining the rights of criminal defendants

Posted on September 20, 2016 by Justice for Willie

It seems that while Willie Manning has been languishing in his cell, the Attorney General, Jim Hood, has been busy harassing experienced capital defense lawyers in Mississippi. Radley Balko relates that Hood has found a way to do this by using a sloppily written law originally intended to ensure defendants in capital cases have adequate legal representation in their appeals.

Hood’s efforts culminated in a particularly startling attempt to attack defense lawyers earlier this year. It happened after Chris Fabricant, Director of Strategic Litigation for the Innocence Project, questioned bite mark ‘expert’, Michael West, at a deposition for a post-conviction hearing for a Mississippi death penalty case*. West was poorly prepared and seemed reluctant to be questioned; he retorted with childish and profane gibes that did nothing to establish the truth.

Instead of apologizing for this sorry display of peevishness by a state expert, Hood formally requested a hearing to assess the competency of the Innocence Project team involved in the case, all of whom are well qualified and experienced. (Some of them have commented on Willie’s 1992 case: Vanessa Potts, senior staff attorney, was interviewed about it in 2013, and Tucker Carrington commented last year that the state had written Willie off as the type of person capable of committing murder.)

Fortunately, days after Hood’s request, the Mississippi Supreme Court tightened up the wording of the law that Hood was attempting to use, so that the Innocence Project team was no longer vulnerable.

Balko suggests that Hood’s obvious enthusiasm for the death penalty springs from his wish to run for governor next year. If that is the case, his efforts could well backfire, as people see his methods for what they are:

“The landscape on criminal justice is shifting. Hood’s efforts to undermine the rights of criminal defendants and his utter disinterest in the forensics crisis unfolding right under his nose may came back to haunt him.”

We hope that they will.

*The case of Eddie Lee Howard, sentenced to death in 2000. West’s testimony was the only physical evidence that placed Howard at the crime scene.

 

Posted in capital punishmant, criminal justice, death peanlty, Jim Hood, Mississippi, USA, Willie Manning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Multiple, Repeated Hygiene Breaches

Posted on September 6, 2016 by Justice for Willie

The kitchen that provides food for Willie Manning and other Unit 29 inmates in Parchman prison, Mississippi, was closed down from July 24 because of its multiple, repeated hygiene breaches.

Among the violations reported were:

-Cornbread baked on dirty racks.
-Bread opened and unprotected.
-Roaches crawling up the wall and behind the food tray rack.
-Roaches in the cooler.
-Food stored in kitchen coolers that are out of order
-Food stored on floor under temperature awaiting transport.
-A leak in the ceiling where the food was being prepared.
-Paint peeling from that ceiling.
-Water pooling in the food preparation area.
-Food and chemicals stored in the same area.
-No hand soap in the kitchen bathroom.
-Cats sleeping at the back kitchen entrance.

According to the Corrections Commissioner, Marshall Fisher, the kitchen will reopen next month. Meanwhile, the prison’s Unit 30 kitchen has been responsible for feeding the 1,300 inmates normally fed by the Unit 29 kitchen, on top of the 750 inmates in Unit 30 whom it normally serves. Fisher states that no inmate has missed a meal; however, serving times are longer.

There are also concerns that portion sizes have decreased. The overall Department of Corrections annual budget has decreased by over $27 million since fiscal 2014, despite the clear need for improvements in prison infrastructure and training.

This is just one more challenge for Willie Manning. We wish him the strength to survive.

Posted in Death Row, Mississippi, Mississippi State Penitentiary, Parchman, prison conditions, USA, Willie Manning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Connection with Lynchings

Posted on August 23, 2016 by Justice for Willie

The Movement for Black Lives’ new policy platform is clear about the death penalty’s racism:
“The death penalty in the U.S. was designed to bring lynching into the courtroom and has targeted Blacks and other people of color and poor people throughout its history. The death penalty devalues Black lives — statistically those convicted of killing white people are at least three to four times more likely to be sentenced to death than killers of anyone else… It is randomly and arbitrarily sought by prosecutors who have the sole discretion to seek or not seek death, upwards of 95 percent of whom are white…”

Willie Manning is African American. In his concluded case it was a white prosecutor and two white law enforcement officers who coerced the key witness into wrongly securing Willie’s two death sentences. 

And in his ongoing case it was a white judge that allowed the same white prosecutor to strike African American jurors from his trial. The prosecutor, appealing to a white audience, later denigrated Willie publicly with the label of ‘Beelzebub’, one of the Devil’s senior lieutenants. 

The connection with lynchings is only too apparent.

We applaud the Movement for Black Lives’ stand.

Posted in capital punishmant, criminal justice, death penalty, Mississippi, Movement for Black Lives, racism, USA, Willie Manning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

We will abolish the death penalty

Posted on August 7, 2016 by Justice for Willie

At long last one of the two biggest US political parties has committed to abolish the death penalty! The Democratic Party proposes:

“We will abolish the death penalty, which has proven to be a cruel and unusual form of punishment. It has no place in the United States of America. The application of the death penalty is arbitrary and unjust. The cost to taxpayers far exceeds those of life imprisonment. It does not deter crime. And, exonerations show a dangerous lack of reliability for what is an irreversible punishment.”*

The stance is undoubtedly influenced by the views of former Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, a longstanding opponent of the death penalty. Speaking to the Senate last year, Sanders declared:
“I believe it is time for the United States of America to join almost every other Western, industrialized country on Earth in saying no to the death penalty.”

The Democrats’ platform would not lead to instant change: the necessary legal and administrative changes would take time. And it is notable that the statement conflicts with the views of the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, who still supports “very limited use” of the federal death penalty in “particularly heinous” terrorist crimes, for instance, for mass shooting suspect, Dylann Roof. Clinton’s presidential running mate, Tim Kaine, probably welcomes the party’s new objective, as he admits he is conflicted over the 11 executions that he presided over as governor of Virginia:
“I really struggled with that as governor. I have a moral position against the death penalty.”

Despite the obstacles that remain to be cleared, the Democratic Party’s stated aim of abolishing the death penalty is welcome. The Libertarian Party and Green Party also oppose the death penalty; the Republican Party and Constitution Party support it.

In Mississippi, where Willie Manning sits on death row, Governor Phil Bryant is Republican and therefore unlikely to oppose the death penalty. Death penalty opponents should remember where their vote could count in ending the death penalty for good.

* P.16 of 2016 DEMOCRATIC PARTY PLATFORM (P. 20 of whole document)

Posted in capital punishment, criminal justice, death penalty, Democratic Party, Mississippi, USA, Willie Manning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Midazolam: an Unsuitable Drug

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Justice for Willie

While DNA testing and fingerprint comparison continue in Willie Manning’s case, other claims relevant to him are before the Mississippi Supreme Court. Two other death row inmates, Richard Jordan and Gerald Loden, continue to challenge attempts by the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) to use an unsuitable drug in its execution procedure.

Mississippi’s execution legislation requires three drugs, the first of which should be a sedative. Although an amendment to the lethal injection protocol was signed by Governor Bryant earlier this year, it retained a requirement for the sedative to be an “ultra short-acting barbiturate or other similar drug”.*

The sedative available to MDOC when Jordan and Loden’s challenge began last year was compounded pentobarbital.  The inmates’ original complaint highlighted the unsuitability of this drug. However, hours before a hearing in a federal court last July, and without legislative approval, MDOC filed into the federal record a new execution protocol which allowed a completely different drug, midazolam, to be used as a sedative.**

Earlier this month Jordan and Loden filed a petition in the Mississippi Supreme Court opposing the use of midazolam. They point out that far from being an “ultra short-acting barbiturate”, midazolam is not a barbiturate at all, but a benzodiazepine. Moreover, according to Dr Craig Stevens, an experienced Professor of Pharmacology,*** midazolam should not be considered an “other similar drug” :

“…Pharmacological substitution is a legitimate method to provide equal pharmacological effects when one drug is no longer be [sic] available. However, it is not permissible to pharmacologically substitute one drug, such as the barbiturate thiopental, with another drug, such as the benzodiazepine midazolam, where no such pharmacological equivalency exists.”

Stevens also believes that “the use of midazolam in the Mississippi three-drug protocol creates a substantial risk of serious harm and severe pain to the condemned prisoner”.

The Mississippi Supreme Court should acknowledge the large body of scientific findings that contributes to Stevens’s conclusion. The use of midazolam in lethal injections should be ruled illegal.

*See Successive Petition for Post-Conviction Relief, filed in the Supreme Court of Mississippi July 6 2016 (P. 14 of whole document).
** See Successive Petition for Post-Conviction Relief, filed in the Supreme Court of Mississippi July 6 (P.12 of whole document). 2016  
*** Dr Craig Stevens (see Successive Petition for Post-Conviction Relief, filed in the Supreme Court of Mississippi, July 6 2016, pp 176 – 220 of whole document).

 

Posted in capital punishment, death penalty constitutionality, execution drugs, executions, Fly Manning, Injustice, lethal injection drugs, midazolam, Mississippi, USA, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Premeditated Attempted Murder

Posted on July 11, 2016 by Justice for Willie

Willie Manning’s prosecutor, Forrest Allgood, was implicated by a recanting witness (Kevin Lucious) in Willie’s 1993 case:
“Luscious said District Attorney Forrest Allgood… told Luscious that he would not charge him with capital murder if he cooperated.”

And in Willie’s ongoing 1992 case, Allgood wrongly dismissed African American jurors, and built on the false testimony of the FBI hair expert to suggest to the jury that Willie was in the car belonging to one of the victims.

A recent report from the Fair Punishment Project notes that just five prosecutors are responsible for “roughly 15% of the current death row population nationwide, or approximately one out of every seven individuals on death row.” Commenting on the report, the New York Times concludes:
“the death penalty has been, and continues to be, a personality-driven system with very few safeguards against misconduct and frequent abuse of power, a fact that seriously undermines its legitimacy.”

Despite Radley Balko’s description of  Allgood  as “[o]ne of America’s worst prosecutors”, he is not among the thirteen “deadly” prosecutors mentioned in the Fair Punishment Project’s report. Nor is Jim Williams, the Louisiana prosecutor who secured wrongful death sentences for John Thompson and others:
“Jim Williams was so zealous in his pursuit of the death penalty that he even posed for a picture with the mini-electric chair on his desk on which he had taped the faces of the men that he had wrongfully sent to death row. The toy electric chair was his trophy for his kills. He posed with it like white men used to pose around the body of a Black man they had lynched.”

After an investigation into Williams and others was halted at the point of indictment, Thompson made his own attempt to hold the prosecutor accountable. He sued the prosecutor’s office, was awarded $14 million by a jury in Louisiana, but then lost his entitlement to it: the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that prosecutors cannot be held liable for their misconduct, even if they deliberately cheat to convict innocent people.

As long as such protection is given to prosecutors who commit what Thompson rightly calls “premeditated attempted murder”, there will be more victims like Willie Manning and John Thompson. Over-generous prosecutorial protection leads to devastated lives and quite possibly even murder. It is time to address what Thompson calls this “totally preventable crime”.

 

Posted in African American, capital punishmant, death penalty abuse, Mississippi, prosecutorial misconduct, USA, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Two-person Crime

Posted on June 28, 2016 by Justice for Willie

A radio blog* recorded the day before Willie Jerome Manning’s scheduled execution in May, 2013, features Vincent Hill, a private investigator and former policeman. Hill re-examined the evidence in Willie’s 1992 case, and found many omissions and inconsistencies.

Here David Skato, a childhood friend of Willie’s family, tells Hill that a second murderer was implicated:

DS: There were statements that there is another person that was also involved, but they never looked for him, you know, they pretty much settled on Willie and it was like, “OK, the accomplice -we’ll just let him go.” And you don’t do that when it’s a murder case. You don’t just let somebody go.

VH: No, you definitely don’t do that when there’s a murder case, especially if you want to make sure you have all of the pieces of the puzzle, to say, “Yep, we’re 100% sure”…
I’m glad you brought that up, you know. I didn’t realize that they said that there was another person involved. Because before you said that I was thinking, “Well, how would he have forced two people into the car?” You can only point the gun at one person, from one side of the car. So, I’m assuming you would take out the biggest threat first, which would have been Jon, the male victim. So I’ve always said the type would be a two-person crime. And for two people to have been in the car and still not one thing point to Willie…

It was Earl Jordan**, a jailhouse snitch charged with other crimes on the Mississippi State University campus, who said he heard Willie confessing that both he and Jessie ‘One Wing’ Lawrence had committed the murders. Jordan’s statement helped to convict Willie even though it included the scarcely believable scenario that the two victims and two perpetrators were crammed into Miller’s two-seater car. It was later revealed that Jordan’s account must have been untrue, given that Jessie Lawrence had been in prison in Alabama at the time of the murders.

At an earlier stage in the police investigations, when two other suspects (Johnny Lowery {aka “Judy”} and Anthony Reed) were the lead suspects, Jordan had been equally happy to provide the police with an inculpatory statement about them.  

At Willie’s trial Jordan admitted that he was hoping for assistance with his charges. Just two months after reporting Willie’s “confession,” the state reduced charges against Jordan, indicting him only for looting, instead of as a habitual offender.

Jordan has admitted to Willie’s lawyer and an investigator that he lied about Willie’s ‘confession’ (but he has not signed an affidavit formally recanting his statement about Willie).

We do not know why Jordan’s testimony – about two perpetrators – was accepted despite its anomalies. Nor do we know how the state believes only one perpetrator could have controlled two victims in a two-seater car. 

There are still many unanswered questions about this case. Even if DNA and fingerprint testing proves inconclusive, more answers are needed. Willie deserves a new trial.

*See Dead Man Walking. The Willie Manning Case (Blog Talk Radio’s “The Other Side of Justice”). The interview does not start properly until 4 minutes into the recording. The passage quoted here starts at 27.15.
** See Willie’s petition for post-conviction relief, in the Circuit Court for Oktibbeha County, Mississippi, October 8, 2001 (pages 18 – 23 of the petition i.e. pages 37 – 42 of the entire archived document; also Exhibits 3 – 8 on pages 135 – 151 of the entire archived document).
Posted in African American, America, capital punishmant, criminal justice, death peanlty, DNA testing, innocence, miscarriages of justice, Mississippi, Starkville, USA, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment