Richard Glossip: Tenuous, Untrustworthy Evidence of Guilt

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Justice for Willie

Richard Glossip is scheduled to be executed in Oklahoma on Wednesday (September 16, 2015). One of his current attorneys, Don Knight, has described his trial in marketing terms:
“Basically, you’ve got prosecution trying to sell their product [Glossip’s responsibility for a murder] to the jury.”

Knight argues that without an effective counter-narrative from the defense, the jury ‘bought’ the prosecution’s product.

As Barry Scheck writes in the Huffington Post,
“We … don’t know for sure whether Richard Glossip is innocent or guilty. That is precisely the problem.
If we keep executing defendants in cases like this, where the evidence of guilt is tenuous and untrustworthy, we will keep killing innocent people.”

In both Willie Manning’s cases evidence of guilt was also tenuous and untrustworthy. In his 1992 case it was probably last-minute revelations from the FBI (about false hair and ballistics testimony) that brought about the court’s stay of his execution. In his unrelated 1993 case it was a court’s acceptance that the prosecution had withheld evidence that resulted in the charges against him being dropped. If the exculpatory evidence had not been revealed in time, in either of his cases, Willie would by now be dead, executed in error.

It is shocking that Glossip might die on Wednesday simply because his attorneys’ investigations require longer than the allocated time to uncover evidence that could quite possibly, as in Willie’s cases, prove exculpatory.

**********

Statement by Richard Glossip:
“I have been fighting for my innocence for 18 years. I now understand how important my fight is, not just for myself but for everyone facing the death penalty for something they didn’t do. I’m not doing this for myself alone. I hope and pray that my eventual exoneration will help others, and that this country will finally realize just how broken our system is, and how easy it is to make mistakes. Let me be clear, I do not want to be a martyr—I want to live—but if the worst happens, I want my death not to be in vain. If my execution ensured no other innocent man was sent to the death chamber, I am prepared to die for that cause.”

Information about Glossip’s case, and action that can be taken in his support, can be found here.

Posted in capital punishment, death penalty, Death Row, executions, Fly Manning, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Richard Glossip, USA, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mississippi Executions Stopped Temporarily

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Justice for Willie

Richard Jordan, a Vietnam veteran whose mental state deteriorated following his military service, was spared execution in Mississippi last week following a federal judge’s order. The Attorney General’s office had requested an execution for Jordan on Thursday August 27, but the Mississippi Supreme Court failed to authorize this. The federal judge, African American US District Judge Henry T. Wingate, then temporarily halted all executions in the state. You can read Wingate’s order at Buzzfeed. 

When the announcement came, Jordan and the other death row inmates, including Willie Manning, were on their fourth week of lockdown, which blocks their usual hour’s daily access to an outside pen, and prevents delivery from the prison store. In this situation the news of Wingate’s order must have afforded them some relief.

Jordan and another inmate, Ricky Chase, challenged Mississppi’s lethal injection protocol in April, saying that they risk excruciating pain and torture during an execution that violates the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. At that time pentobarbital was the anesthetic that Mississippi planned to use for executions. Because manufacturers were unwilling to supply this drug, the state was probably hoping to procure it from an unregulated compounding pharmacy. Pentobarbital has since become harder to obtain: compounding pharmacies as well as manufacturers are now refusing to supply the drug for executions. Some states have turned to midazolam as a substitute, and the US Supreme Court ruled in June that midazolam can be used in executions in Oklahoma, despite huge doubts about its effectiveness as an anesthetic.* Mississippi changed its lethal injection protocol partway through Jordan and Chase’s lawsuit: it stated it had destroyed its expired supply of pentobarbital, and would now use midazolam instead.

Wingate finds a violation of Mississippi Statutory law and the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution in the State’s failure to use an “ultra-short acting barbiturate or other similar drug” (pentobarbital is a barbiturate; midazolam is not). Wingate’s ruling also states that the more reliable anesthetic, pentobarbital, is still being used by other states in executions and “continues to be an option for use by the State of Mississippi”.

As well as specifically prohibiting executions using midazolam or compounded pentobarbital, Wingate’s order requires Mississippi to submit to the court any alternative plans for execution using any other drug or combination of drugs.

The death penalty is, sadly, far from ended in Mississippi – but for now, at least, the inmates of Mississippi State Penitentiary’s death row can breathe a little easier, thanks to Wingate’s ruling.

*See Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in Glossip et al v. Gross et al regarding the ‘expert’ on midazolam relied on by the majority: “Dr. Evans’ conclusions were entirely unsupported by any study or third-party source, contradicted by the extrinsic evidence proffered by petitioners, inconsistent with the scientific understanding of midazolam’s properties, and apparently premised on basic logical errors.
Posted in capital punishment, death penalty, Death Row, executions, Fly Manning, lethal injections, midazolam, Mississippi, pentobarbital, torture, USA, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Willie’s DNA Profile Requested

Posted on August 15, 2015 by Justice for Willie

Today it is exactly two years – 730 long days – since a mandate from the Mississippi Supreme Court allowed Willie Manning to pursue his request for DNA testing and fingerprint comparison. For Willie the two years must have seemed interminable.

At long last, however, there are signs that the DNA testing may soon be complete. On July 23 there was authorization by the court for blood samples from the two victims to be sent to the Cellmark forensic lab where items from the crime scene are being analyzed. This was followed only 18 days later (on August 10) by further authorization, this time for a tissue sample from Willie to be sent to the lab,

“so that Mr. Manning’s DNA profile can be established and compared to any profiles obtained from the submitted evidence sources”.

A Buccal DNA Collector, used to collect cells from inside an individual’s cheek, has been delivered. Medical personnel of the Mississippi Department of Corrections at Parchman are to collect the sample, witnessed by Willie’s lawyer, and, if wished, by counsel for the State.

After over twenty years on death row, Willie must be struggling to comprehend that this is all real. There have been so many moments of hope followed by despair; so many long years of trauma, despondency and grief; such a deep sense of abandonment and separation from the world. After all this it must feel as if the prospect of exoneration will remain a perpetual illusion.

Our thoughts are with Willie as he undergoes the simple DNA collection process, attempting to take in the enormity of what is happening. And we trust that the analysis and comparison process will be quick, so that Willie will finally have the certainty that he needs and deserves.

Posted in African American, capital punishment, death penalty, Death Row, DNA profiling, DNA testing, Fly Manning, Mississippi, torture, USA, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

False Testimony Amplified

Posted on August 11, 2015 by Justice for Willie

The issue of forensic hair testimony in Willie’s remaining case was clarified last month by D.H. Kaye in three posts on his blog, Forensic Science, Statistics & the Law (see here, here and here). Kaye discussed the errors made by the FBI hair expert at Willie’s trial, as detailed in two letters which the Department of Justice sent in quick succession shortly before Willie’s scheduled execution in May 2013.

The first letter revealed the error made when the FBI hair analyst gave the jurors a general explanation of microscopic hair comparison: he wrongly ‘stated or implied’ that a hair could be ‘associated with a specific individual to the exclusion of all others’.

The second letter focused on an error that was arguably more significant: in a written report the analyst stated unequivocally that some of the hair fragments were ‘of Negroid origin’, and in testimony he described them as being ‘African American’. We are told that this ‘exceeded the limits of science’: he should instead have testified that the hair exhibited traits associated with African Americans. Kaye’s analysis last month highlighted the invalidity of such testimony according to the Department of Justice’s standard.

The prosecutor drew on both the errors. The first error allowed him to narrow the options, relying on the “statistical weight” that had been wrongly attributed to microscopic hair comparison. The second error was amplified. The prosecutor not only described the hair fragments as African American in origin, he also linked it to aspects of the case which the jurors had been led to associate with Willie:
“How many people could leave those hair fragments, left the house with the gun and the gloves, was trying to sell a ring and a watch like Jon Steckler’s, and also had the jacket from John Wise’s car…?”

As stated in Willie’s Reply to State’s Opposition,
“The FBI agent provided false testimony that was then used by the prosecutor at trial to suggest to the jury that Mr Manning was in the victim’s car.”

Two days after the second letter about hair testimony was sent, a third letter followed, discrediting the FBI ballistics expert testimony given at Willie’s trial. Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, neatly summarizes the implications:
“two different types of junk science masquerad[ed] as forensic evidence of his guilt.” 

The Mississippi Supreme Court gave no reason for finally staying Willie’s execution and later granting him DNA and fingerprint testing. But according to ThinkProgress,
“Manning’s defense attorneys are confident that FBI failures were responsible.”

It is a bitter irony that the systematic error of FBI experts, so crushing to Willie at his trial, may, in its exposure 20 years later, allow him finally to prove his innocence.

Posted in Fly Manning, forensic testimony, Injustice, Mississippi, USA, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Hope in the Midst of Despair

Posted on July 30, 2015 by Justice for Willie

Imagine being on death row for 20 years, convicted of crimes of which you are innocent. Your juries believed the prosecutors, and during the appeals process your innocence becomes irrelevant (appeals focus only on whether correct procedures have been followed).

Throughout this nightmare you must stay in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, 7 days a week, throughout each long year.

Throw into this mix the heat of a Mississippi summer, even more unbearable in the confines of a prison not designed for comfort. Then water is cut off. You wait several days before bottled water is provided between meals. The electricity is cut off and your fan no longer works. The hall fans also stop working. The heat index rises to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius).

Such was the lot of Willie Manning between Saturday July 18 and Thursday July 23 2015. The situation is reportedly normal now, but this episode must have reinforced the feeling that nobody cares.

Fortunately, on the same day that normality was restored to the death row cells in Mississippi State Penitentiary, the Oktibbeha County Court issued an order relating to Willie’s case. Although not greatly significant, this provides the reassurance that DNA testing is proceeding as it should.

The order requires the Mississippi Crime Lab to provide samples of blood from the victims in Willie’s case. The samples are to be sent to Cellmark Forensics,

“so that the victims’ DNA profiles can be established and compared to any profiles obtained from the submitted evidence sources.”

In other words, things are moving. There is hope. And any little fragments of hope are enormously important when you are innocent on death row.

Posted in African American, capital punishment, death penalty, Death Row, Fly Manning, Innocent, Mississippi State Penitentiary Parchman, prison conditions, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

US Supreme Court: Faulty Analysis of Willie’s Cases

Posted on July 19, 2015 by Justice for Willie

Death penalty supporters disappointed by last month’s US Supreme Court ruling are finding hope for the future in the dissents to the ruling, supported by four of the nine justices. Justice Breyer’s dissent is particularly comprehensive:

“I would ask for full briefing on … whether the death penalty violates the Constitution.”

Hi arguments include: the possibility of executing innocent people, the torture of keeping death row inmates locked up in isolation for many years while appeals are heard, and the possibility of people coming close to execution before the execution is stayed. Willie Manning is mentioned in the latter context (see P.71 of the dissent).  

Justice Breyer states,

“Willie Manning was four hours from his scheduled execution before the Mississippi Supreme Court stayed the execution. Two years later, Manning was exonerated after the evidence against him, including flawed testimony from an FBI hair examiner, was severely undermined.”

Justice Breyer fails to grasp Willie’s exceptional situation in having been convicted of two unrelated cases of double murder, and thus makes the common mistake of condensing the two cases into one. Willie has been exonerated in one of the cases (Jimmerson-Jordan), but not yet in the case for which FBI hair testimony was flawed (Steckler-Miller).

If even a sympathetic US Supreme Court Justice has failed to note the significance of Willie having had death sentences in two unrelated cases, both marked by extremely shaky evidence, it is a fair assumption that there are as yet many more people who know Willie’s name but share the judge’s  ignorance about the extent of the injustice involved. We trust that DNA testing and fingerprint comparison will soon reveal the truth about the Steckler-Miller case, and expose the magnitude of the wrong that Willie has suffered.

Posted in capital punishment, death penalty, Fly Manning, Glossip v. Gross, Justice Breyer, miscarriages of justice, Mississippi, SCOTUS, US Supreme Court, USA, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Bitter Blow

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Justice for Willie

The Glossip v. Gross ruling is a bitter blow for death penalty opponents. A deeply divided and acrimonious US Supreme Court ruled 5:4 last week that: “Because the death penalty is constitutional there must be a constitutional way of carrying it out.”

Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress makes it clear  that this 
“…elevates the death penalty to a kind of super-legal status that renders it impervious to many constitutional challenges.”

Morever, the ruling effectively requires defense attorneys to identify alternative means of execution if they believe the one on offer is likely to cause pain. Professor Michael Radelet, a death penalty expert, is incredulous:
“I just can’t think what they were thinking. It is not for defence lawyers to come up with new effective ways for the state to kill their clients.”

  • The widespread criticism of the ruling encompasses many more points, such as:
    the majority’s dismissal of the pain caused by execution drugs;
  • the majority judges’ contemptuous rejection of the dissenters’ well researched expert opinions about midazolam, the drug at the heart of the discussion;
  • Justice Scalia’s irritation with research regarding the deterrent effect, if any, of the death penalty;
  • The majority’s obsession with factors that should be irrelevant to the arguments (as John Stinneford concludes in The Conversation, “an offender should not be tortured to death because the Supreme Court does not like the strategy of those who wish to abolish the death penalty.” )

Many death row inmates claim innocence, among them Richard Glossip in Oklahoma (whose name is now known because of this ruling), and Willie Manning in Mississippi. For them Justice Scalia has cold comfort:
“any innocent defendant is infinitely better off appealing a death sentence than a sentence of life imprisonment,” as a capital convict “will obtain endless legal assistance from the abolition lobby (and legal favouritism from abolitionist judges), while the lifer languishes unnoticed behind bars.”

So, according to Justice Scalia’s pronouncements, an innocent death row inmate is fortunate because he stands a better chance of exoneration than his counterpart serving life without parole; but if the innocent death row inmate fails in his quest for exoneration and is executed that’s fine, as long as he had “a fair and full trial”.

So that’s all right then. Thank you, Justice Scalia – Richard and Willie can breathe easy now. The death penalty is exonerated.

Posted in capital punishment, death penalty, Glossip v. Gross, innocence, Justice Scalia, Mississippi, SCOTUS, USA, Willie Manning, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Shadows from the Confederate Flag

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Justice for Willie

The race war craved by Dylann Roof has so far erupted only with words and petitions, not with violence.  Roof, charged with shooting dead nine African American people in Charleston, South Carolina, faced their relatives last week; incredibly their words, spoken with dignity, were of their forgiveness for him.

But changes there have been. The confederate flag, widely seen as a symbol of white supremacy, has been banned for sale by many stores and online companies, and its status on government premises is being questioned throughout the American South. As Willie Manning and other African Americans know, the flag celebrates an economy rooted in slavery;   Mississippi’s Declaration of Secession is unequivocal about this:
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world… none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.”

Where the flag is tolerated it validates institutional racism. This includes racism within the judiciary. A report published last year  found that:
“…each stage of the criminal justice system is affected by policies and discretion that often unintentionally disfavor low-income individuals and people of color.”

In Charleston the very magistrate who presided over Roof’s bond hearing had previously been reprimanded for using a racist word when speaking to an African American defendant. And last week he told the hearing that Roof’s family too are victims. His point is valid; but would he have made this remark if Roof had been African American and the victims white?

In Willie’s case it was a white judge that allowed the prosecutor to strike African American jurors from his trial; and a white prosecutor, appealing to a white audience, who denigrated Willie publicly with the label of ‘Beelzebub’, the Devil’s lieutenant. Who can tell how deeply racism saturates Willie’s case, from the moment when the police charged him to the time when the appeals judges resisted DNA testing? As Carrington Tucker says, 

“In my mind, the state had written Willie off. Who gives a fuck about this guy? …We know he’s the type of person who’s capable of doing this. It’s him.”

As confederate flags disappear from store shelves perhaps a new recognition is needed: the recognition that Willie’s trial and appeals and those of many other African Americans have been tainted by the shadow that falls from the confederate flag.

  

Posted in African Americans, Charleston shootings, confederate flag, Death Row, Dylann Roof, institutional racism, judiciary, Mississippi, racism, slavery, USA, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

DNA Testing: Semen Found

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Justice for Willie

The results of preliminary DNA testing in Willie Manning’s Steckler-Miller case were made public yesterday. The results, given in a letter from a Senior Forensic DNA Analyst at the Cellmark Forensics Dallas Lab, are as follows:
Rape kit
Three swabs were tested for semen. One was found to be positive, and the other two were inconclusive. All three will undergo DNA extraction and quantification to determine whether any male DNA is present.
Pubic hair
The pubic hair combings were inconclusive for semen, but the pubic hair was negative for semen. Only the pubic hair combings will undergo DNA extraction and quantification to determine whether any male DNA is present.
Fingernail scrapings (from both hands of both victims)
Preliminary testing established the concentration of human and male DNA present. The samples will all undergo a process to increase the concentration of DNA, then DNA profiling will determine whether any male DNA profile is present that does not originate from the victims.
Hair from victims’ hands
No hairs were present in the evidence marked as “hair in Miller’s right hand” or the evidence marked as “hair in Steckler’s left hand”.

The letter is included in a document that also incorporates an order by the Oktibbeha County Circuit Court about the procedures for fingerprint analysis in Willie’s case. The order states that the Mississippi Crime Lab should work with Ron Smith & Associates, Inc. (MS) to attempt to determine matches for the fingerprints found at the murder scene and on John Wise’s burgled car (which the state speculated played a part in a kidnap leading to the murders). The court order states that the fingerprint lifts should be dispatched to the Mississippi Crime Lab for this purpose within 30 days from June 5 2015.

 The Cellmark letter is necessarily cautious about the initial DNA findings: further testing will now be needed. But the presence of semen in one of the rape kit samples seems like a good sign. As the letter notes,
“It is possible we will find male DNA in the [rape kit sample that was positive for semen].”

It is also good that further testing of much of the other evidence is recommended, and that the process of fingerprint matching is at last set to begin.

Willie will be 47 on Friday (June 12); this report will make a good birthday present. We wish him many happy returns for Friday!

Posted in African American, capital punishmant, death penalty, Death Row, Fly Manning, forensic testing, Mississippi, USA, Willie Manning, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Real Exoneration

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Justice for Willie

Well done, Columbus Dispatch, for turning out a well-balanced article by Carl Smith about Willie Manning last month! Smith summarized the information in the legal documents that led to Willie’s exoneration in his 1993 case, and provided links so readers could look at the documents for themselves. He attempted to interview both the prosecutor and the defense, although he succeeded only with the prosecutor. This was a far cry from the article denouncing Willie which appeared in the same newspaper nearly two years before, an article which we have criticized on this website.

Our criticism this time is not with the newspaper, but with the prosecutor, district attorney Forrest Allgood. Smith quotes him as saying:

“It’s not a matter of if (Manning) did it or didn’t do it, it’s a matter of how we can’t go forward. [The key witness, Lucious] was functionally the way we proved our case. There was corroborating evidence, but there were no other witnesses that heard Manning admit (the crime) or go into the apartment.”

D.A. Allgood’s words imply that Willie was only ‘functionally’ exonerated, as if in reality he was guilty. The prosecutor’s implication carries weight because it is made by an establishment figure lined up against a nobody: it is therefore dangerous.

Allgood speaks vaguely of ‘corroborating evidence’ without saying what it is. Presumably he was referring to the witnesses who, a year after the crime, testified that they had seen Willie in the victims’ apartment complex on the day of the murders. But their testimony is highly unlikely to have been accurate. Research shows that after 11 months the rate of accurate eyewitness identification decreases to only 11%, which is no better than would have occurred by chance.* Moreover, Willie’s face would have been familiar because of media coverage of his other case; witnesses could well have been influenced by this, consciously or subconsciously. Willie himself is probably rather more likely to have recalled accurately whether he went to the complex then: he has always denied having done so.

In addition, one witness, Herbert Ashford, undermined his own credibility by making statements that were contradictory. And Lucious’s statement about the police and prosecutor misconduct involved in procuring his own (now recanted) testimony throws even more doubt on the highly dubious witness statements.

What prosecutor Allgood failed to mention in his statement last month was that a bloody shoeprint found next to one of the bodies was made by a shoe that was much smaller than the shoes worn by Willie. The state did not divulge this information at the time of the trial. If the prosecutor had proceeded with a new trial, he would have faced a defense that was able to present this potentially exculpatory evidence to the jury.

It is no wonder that the prosecutor opted for exoneration rather than a new trial. Far from being unable to proceed because of ‘functional’ difficulties, he knew that the game was up. Willie’s exoneration is fully deserved.

*False Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the Innocent’, Jim Petro and Nancy Petro, 2010, page 158

Posted in African American, capital punishment, death penalty, death sentence, exonerations, eyewitness testimony, Mississippi, police misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct, unreliable witnesses, USA, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment