Prosecutors’ Belief in their own Infallibility

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Justice for Willie

It is hard to know what is most shocking about the case of mentally disabled Henry Lee McCollum*, exonerated and released earlier this month after spending 30 years on death row in North Carolina. It is shocking that his mental disability did not preclude the death penalty in his case. It is perhaps even more shocking that he was questioned by police for five hours under extreme pressure until he produced a confession, to make the interrogation stop. It is scandalous that his confession must have been fed to him by the police. It is disturbing that police hid evidence that was favourable to him. It is shameful that the police’s exclusive focus on McCollum prevented them from arresting the true murderer, who was thus free to commit another murder.

The distressing list extends further. One of the US Supreme Court judges, Justice Antonin Scalia, specifically cited McCollum’s case as an example of a crime so heinous that it would be hard to argue against lethal injection for him. (It is worth noting that Justice Scalia also believes that execution is a just end for anybody who eventually proves his innocence, provided he or she originally had a fair and full trial.) And it was McCollum’s image that the North Carolina Republican Party selected and publicized, as part of their 2010 campaign to demonstrate the dangers of being soft on crime.

But what perhaps seems most bizarre is that even after DNA testing has proved conclusively that a different man was the murderer, the original district attorney in McCollum’s case, Joe Freeman Britt, remains convinced of McCollum’s guilt.

In his book, Injustice: Life and Death in the Courtrooms of America (Vintage, 2013) Clive Stafford Smith advances a view about prosecutors that could explain this misplaced zeal:

“As a matter of human nature, it is probably inevitable that those who spend their lives sending people to prison become increasingly converted to this notion of prosecutorial infallibility. It would be difficult to drive to work every day pondering how many innocent people you might deprive of liberty today. There is a second self-selection procedure, whereby those who continue to harbour doubts move on from the prosecutor’s office quite rapidly. The remainder confirm each other’s biases around the coffee machine until the wagons are fully circled.”

Prosecutors’ prejudices are strengthened by legal protection. The ‘doctrine of sovereign immunity’ makes it impossible to sue a prosecutor who frames an innocent person for capital murder.

Just like McCollum, Willie Jerome Manning has walked a long and difficult road to gain the DNA testing that could exonerate him and may identify a murderer. Like McCollum, Willie has suffered from hugely negative publicity. Is it possible that, as happened with McCollum, Willie’s unwarranted notoriety derives ultimately from prosecutors’ misplaced belief in their own infallibility?

 

*McCollum was convicted alongside his mentally disabled half-brother, Leon Brown, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for rape. Brown was only 15 at the time of the crime. He was exonerated and released at the same time as McCollum.

Posted in African American, capital punishment, death penalty, Death Row, DNA testing, doctrine of sovereign immunity, Fly Manning, Henry Lee McCollum, Injustice, mental disability, Mississippi, Mississippi judicial system, North Carolina, police misconduct, prosecutors, US Supreme Court, USA injustice, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning, witness pressured, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Prosecutors hid evidence of innocence’

Posted on September 6, 2014 by Justice for Willie

‘Death row inmate: Prosecutors hid evidence of innocence’, headlines this week’s Clarion Ledger article about the case of Jeffrey Havard, who is held alongside Willie on the Parchman death row. Havard is convicted of inflicting sexual abuse on a baby girl and then shaking her to death; but he maintains her death was a tragic accident.

The symptoms of ‘shaken baby syndrome’ are no longer considered conclusive evidence of abuse, as they were when Havard was convicted. But the Clarion Ledger article focuses on Havard’s allegation that prosecutors concealed evidence that the State pathologist, Dr Steven Hayne, told them he found no evidence of sexual abuse.

In fact, prosecutors openly contradicted Hayne’s findings: one of them told the jury Hayne would “come and testify for you about his findings and about how he confirmed the nurses’ and doctors’ worst fears this child had been abused and the child had been penetrated.”

Next month Willie will also be presenting evidence of prosecutorial misconduct. During oral argument on October 27 2014 his lawyer will state that in his 1993 case (involving the murders of two elderly ladies) prosecutors presented false evidence, and failed to disclose evidence favorable to Willie. You can watch the proceedings at the Mississippi Supreme Court website at 1.30 PM on October 27, as explained in the Court order). We urge you to do this if you can.

Posted in abusive head trauma, Brookville Garden, capital punishment, criminal justice USA, death penalty, death penalty USA, Death Row, Fly Manning, Injustice, Jeffrey Havard, Mississippi, Mississippi judicial system, prosecutor misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct, prosecutors, shaken baby syndrome, Steven Hayne, USA injustice, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Brookville Garden Case: Oral Argument Permitted

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Justice for Willie

The Mississippi Supreme Court has announced that it will allow oral argument in Willie Jerome Manning’s 1993 case involving the murder of two elderly ladies, Emmoline Jimmerson and Alberta Jordan (the Brookville Garden case).

The oral argument is scheduled for Monday, October 27 at 1.30 PM. Each side will be allowed 30 minutes for oral argument. The public will be able to watch the proceedings live at http://courts.ms.gov/appellate_courts/sc/scoralarguments.html.

The primary issues that Willie wishes to pursue in this case are:

  • the State failed to disclose evidence favorable to Willie.
  • the State presented false evidence.

You can read more about this case on the home page of this website. A video clip focusing on this case can be viewed at SAVE Innocents (third video clip); the clip is from the Al Jazeera America program, Flawed Forensics (episode 3 in the series The System). A transcript of this clip is available on this website.

Posted in African American, Brookville Garden, capital punishment, death penalty USA, Death Row, Fly Manning, Injustice, miscarriages of justice, Mississippi, Mississippi judicial system, Mississippi Supreme Court, perjured witness testimony, prosecutor misconduct, Willie Fly Manning, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Death Row Inmates: Diminished Culpability

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Justice for Willie

Willie Jerome Manning is yet again waiting for developments in both his cases. As he waits, he is in close proximity to his fellow inmates, and may well be aware of many who are extremely vulnerable. A study published in June, The Failure of Mitigation?, draws our attention to the likely mental condition of these men, based on an analysis of the social histories of the hundred people most recently executed. It concludes that a staggering nine out of ten of those executed had one or more conditions associated with significant functional deficits.

The study itemizes these conditions:

  • “One third of the last hundred executed offenders were burdened by intellectual disability, borderline intellectual functioning or traumatic brain injury – a similarly debilitating intellectual impairment…
  • Over half of the last one hundred executed offenders had been diagnosed with or displayed symptoms of a severe mental illness…
  • More than one third of executed offenders committed a capital crime before turning twenty-five – the age at which the brain fully matures…
  • Fifty per cent of the last hundred executed defendants around the country suffered from complex trauma… severe physical abuse, sexual molestations, domestic violence, the immediate loss of immediate family and chronic homelessness.”

Many of those executed fall into more than one category, including Edwin Hart Turner, executed by Mississippi in 2012, who is categorized under youthfulness, mental illness and childhood trauma.

The authors of the study refer to the US Supreme Court’s mitigation project, which aims to preclude the death penalty for those with diminished culpability. They highlight the Court’s failure to protect such individuals from sentences of death.

They conclude:

“… our project suggests the need for other scholars to conduct more comprehensive examinations of both the failings of the Court’s mitigation-facilitating doctrines as well as the implication for these deficits on the continued constitutionality of the death penalty.”

Although the study focuses on legal issues, the statistics also raise broader questions: for instance, are vulnerable individuals treated appropriately when incarcerated? It seems highly unlikely that a system designed merely to contain and restrain can provide suitable treatment or rehabilitation.

In 2010 Willie wrote,

“This is one of the worst things that any person could ever go through in their life.”

For Willie’s companions with reduced mental faculties, the impact of this intensely harsh environment must surely be unbearable.

Posted in capital litigation, capital murder, capital punishment, criminal justice USA, death penalty, death penalty abuse, death penalty constitutionality, Death Row, death row intellectual disabiliy, death row mental health, diminished culpability, Fly Manning, Injustice, mental illness USA, Mississippi, The Failure of Mitigation, US Supreme Court, USA injustice, Willie Fly Manning, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Death Penalty Delays Unconstitutional

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Justice for Willie

Last month Judge Cormac J. Carney  in California ruled that the death penalty as applied in that state is unconstitutional. His ruling lifted a sentence of death from Ernest Dewayne Jones on the grounds that whether or not he was executed:

“…depend(s) upon a factor largely outside (his) control:… how quickly (he has proceeded) through the State’s dysfunctional post-conviction review process.”

While Judge Carney’s comments focus specifically on the Californian system, some of his remarks apply more generally. He discusses the twin precepts of deterrence and retribution that underpin the USA Supreme Court’s support for the death penalty, and concludes:

“…long delays preceding execution frustrate whatever deterrent effect the death penalty may have”

and “inordinate delay frustrates (the) aim” of “(expressing) moral outrage at particularly offensive conduct”.

In reporting this case David Greenwald reminds us that Willie Manning narrowly escaped being put to death last year with his request for DNA testing unmet. He concludes:

“That a case as flawed as this one came within four hours of execution demonstrates that streamlining the death penalty process may expedite executions, but it will also expedite additional problems in the system.”

Judge Carney seeks to reassure us that it is the delays in the Californian system that he objects to, rather than the appeals themselves:

“The post-conviction review process is … vitally important. It serves both the inmate’s interest in not being improperly executed, as well as the State’s interest in ensuring that it does not improperly execute any individual.”

Even if Willie were guilty (and far more so if innocent, as he claims), the 20 years that he has spent in the exceedingly harsh conditions of death row represent extreme punishment. What is more, the logic of Judge Carney’s ruling suggests that if an execution were to be carried out after those 20 years of incarceration, it would not serve the intended purpose of deterrence and retribution, and so would be unconstitutional.

As Judge Carney says,

“When courts have rejected the theory (that extraordinary delay between sentencing and execution violates the Eighth Amendment), they have often not addressed whether any penological purpose of the death penalty continues to be served more than two decades after the death sentence was imposed.”

 

Posted in California death penalty, capital punishment, criminal justice USA, death penalty, death penalty injustice, death penalty USA, Death Row, executions, Fly Manning, Injustice, Innocent, Judge Carney California, Judge Carney ruling, Mississippi, Penalty phase, unconstitutionality of death penalty, USA injustice, Willie Fly Manning, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New Google Translate Button

Posted on July 29, 2014 by Justice for Willie

The justice4willie website can now be translated from English into 81 languages, using the Google Translate button (low down in the right hand column of the home page of justice4willie).

This feature will be increasingly useful as visitors from more and more countries access the website. The number of countries represented has grown from 57 at the time of Willie’s scheduled execution to the present number of 99.

Please pass this information on to anyone you know that may find it useful!

Finally, a message from Willie in a recent letter:

“Thanks for everything! Take care and tell everyone I said, ‘Hello!’”

 Or, translated into Esperanto:

“Dankon por ĉio! Prizorgi kaj diru ĉiuj mi diris, ‘Saluton!’ “

Posted in African American, capital murder, capital punishment, conviction, criminal justice USA, death penalty, death penalty injustice, Death Row, death row injustice mississippi, Fly Manning, Injustice, Mississippi, Mississippi judicial system, USA injustice, Willie Fly Manning, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Watch Documentary Clips on Willie’s New Webpage

Posted on July 18, 2014 by Justice for Willie

If you missed the Al Jazeera America documentary featuring Willie Manning (episode 3 of the series, The System), you now have a chance to watch parts of it on the recently created website, SAVE Innocents on death row in the USA. The excerpts appear on Willie’s new webpage on this site. As well as two video clips, there is an audio clip from the phone call that Willie made to the director, Joe Berlinger.

The page also includes a video from a news program, Democracy Now, broadcast shortly before Willie was scheduled to be executed last year. You can watch Vanessa Potkin from the Innocence Project explaining the legal background to Willie’s 1992 case; she notes that the Mississippi Attorney General, Jim Hood, made untrue statements at that time.

The SAVE website was created earlier this year by Emmanuelle Purdon, to provide a focus for death row inmates who claim innocence, if their convictions:

“…may be based upon unclear and unconvincing evidence, leaving room for an alternative explanation of the facts”.

Both Willie’s cases easily qualify him for a place on the website.

Samuel Gross, who last year submitted an amicus brief supporting Willie in his 1993 case, recently headed a study investigating the rate of false conviction of people on death row. The study makes a conservative statistical calculation that at least 4.1% of all defendants sentenced to death in the USA in the modern era are innocent; it states that the actual percentage of innocence is likely to be higher than this.

It is possible that the percentage is significantly higher, in some states at least. A Missouri death row exoneree, Reggie Griffin, believes that the study greatly underestimates the true percentage:

“I feel like the number is much higher, being that I’ve been there”.

And an experienced death row attorney, David Dow, thinks that his clients included a proportion of innocents that was closer to 7%:

“Of the hundred or more death-row inmates I’ve represented, there are seven… I believe to be innocent.”*

We will never know for sure the true number of innocents languishing on death rows throughout the USA, but Gross is clear that the legal process cannot prevent the execution of some people who are innocent:

“…you cannot believe that we haven’t executed any innocent person – that would be wishful thinking.”

It is a move in the right direction that the SAVE website now exists to highlight the predicament of those who are fighting to establish their innocence, including Willie.

*David Dow: Killing Time, 2011

Posted in African American injustice, Al Jazeera America The System, capital punishment, criminal justice USA, death penalty, death penalty USA, Death Row Injustice, death row innocence, Fly Manning, Injustice, miscarriages of justice, Mississippi, police misconduct, prosecutor misconduct, Willie Fly Manning, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning, Willie Manning documentary, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Flawed FBI Hair Analysis: Defendants Kept in the Dark

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Justice for Willie

‘Flawed Forensics’ (episode 3 of the Al Jazeera America series, The System) reveals that when conducting forensic hair analysis, FBI experts were often pressured to skew results in favor of the prosecution (see FBI Hair Analysis: Favoring the Prosecution).

More than that, though, the program reports that the FBI and the Department of Justice have known about these practices for a long time:

“Prosecutors were notified about these findings, but few revisited their cases. For more than a decade many defendants were left in the dark. Now letters have started reaching defense attorneys across the country, notifying them that the forensic testimony used to convict their clients was flawed.”

Only days before he was scheduled to be executed, Willie Manning discovered that the hair analysis and testimony in his 1992 case was flawed. John Huffington, the other man who features in the Al Jazeera documentary, found out only through a journalist that the hair testimony at his trial had been discredited, as his lawyer recalls:

“This internal FBI report was completely unknown to us, until an investigative reporter from the Washington Post contacted us about that report in November 2011.”

John Huffington himself has difficulty containing his emotion when he adds:

“If it wasn’t for the Washington Post, we wouldn’t have known today. Twelve years ago in my case they could have fixed it. I’m 51, so that’s another twelve years I lost. I don’t get it back.”

Michael Bromwich, former Inspector General, Department of Justice, criticizes the lack of action:

“The notion that when you’re presented with clear and undeniable evidence that you’ve convicted the wrong person, that people won’t step away from that and do their very best as quickly as possible to acknowledge that there was a mistake made and to try to remediate the problem and make amends to the defendant, I find that extraordinarily disappointing.”

John Huffington reflects on how things could be improved:

“It’s supposed to be a justice system, so justice should be what prevails. Justice and truth is what this is supposed to be about. There should never be a rush to judgment; it shouldn’t be politically expedient. It shouldn’t be easy to put somebody on death row. It shouldn’t be easy to take somebody’s life, and it shouldn’t be easy to just lock somebody up and throw away the key.”

The last word is given to Fred Westhurst, a former FBI forensic expert and whistle blower, who is clear that the issues raised affect far more people than those we have seen in the documentary:

“The real victims of this are the nation, people who’ve believed in this justice system and find that it is very, very flawed. We need systems that we trust. But we don’t need to trust them blindly. It’s not simply the people incarcerated. It’s not simply the families. It’s the communities. It’s the nation.”

Posted in capital punishment, criminal justice USA, death penalty, Death Row, Death Row injustice,, FBI, FBI hair review, flawed testimony, Fly Manning, forensic hair analysis, Injustice, John Huffington, junk science, prosecutor misconduct, prosecutors, USA injustice, Willie Fly Manning, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

FBI Hair Analysis: Favoring the Prosecution

Posted on June 28, 2014 by Justice for Willie

‘Flawed Forensics’, episode 3 of the Al Jazeera America series, ‘The System’, is about what is termed ‘an FBI scandal of manipulated forensic evidence that may have led to thousands of wrongful convictions over the past three decades’. We hear from Fred Whitehurst (forensic chemist and retired FBI agent), who blew the whistle on the Bureau’s crime lab:

“I walked into Alice’s Wonderland as a scientist. There wasn’t any science. This thing about hair analysis – it’s not science. It’s a subjective nightmare. With hair analysis when you’re looking through a microscope you don’t know how many hair characteristics you have to match. You can choose how many match. And it’s depending upon the person that’s doing the analysis, not upon fact, not upon data, not upon a standard.

“The 2000 ton pink elephant in the court room is that the FBI trained every hair examiner in the United States in crime labs. There are hundreds of thousands of hair  cases where people came in and looked through a … microscope for a week or two weeks at the most, went home and started rendering opinions about whether hair matched or not.”

“I wrote 237 letters over a period of five years to the Inspector General. There were issues of reports being rewritten without my knowledge or authorization, equipments dirty, testimonies being given that’s way beyond people’s expertise. They sent the evidence in. And they’re trying to tell you, ‘Look at this without any bias at all’. Then they tell you what they think you’d better find. You had better made sure that this thing came out a particular way.

Michael Bromwich, former Inspector General, Department of Justice, elaborates: ‘making sure that this thing came out a particular way’ meant favoring the prosecution.

“We found that results of analysis were skewed in favor of the prosecution. It wasn’t just a couple of analysts. It was a significant number of people in the lab, analysts in the lab, managers in the lab, who were just allowing bad and misleading work to come out of the lab. There were simply not very many experienced scientists in key lab positions.”

A former federal prosecutor, Joseph Diginova, confirms the extent of the flawed results:

“This is a royal pain in the neck. Federal prosecutors and judges all over the country are going to have to deal now with motions by pending defendants, and already convicted defendants, about the scientific evidence in their cases. This is not a good thing for the FBI.”

If this is a problem for prosecutors and judges, then all the more must it be so for those convicted on the basis of flawed hair analysis. John Huffington, featured in the program alongside Willie, was wrongfully convicted in this way; recent DNA testing has proved the original FBI analysis for his case was wrong.

Huffington’s lawyer, Ryan Malone, talks about his lack of trust in the FBI’s forensic methods:

“We knew there were problems with this technique. There are many documented cases where analysts have matched things like carpet fibers to head hair. It was only when the FBI got involved again that they were able to actually test the hairs. So the FBI lab itself eventually determined that John Huffington could not be matched through the DNA to these hairs. They were able to interpret the shoddy work of their own analyst.”

The FBI was invited to be interviewed, but refused the request. In a written response it stated, ‘There is no reason to believe the FBI Laboratory employed flawed forensic hair testimony. Microscopic hair analysis is a valid forensic technique and one that is still conducted at the FBI Laboratory.

Whitehurst spells out the consequences for Willie and for John Huffington of the flawed FBI hair testimony at their trials:

“Is Mr Manning innocent? Is Mr Huffington innocent? That’s for us to decide when we have the truth before us. Somebody can take you, sir, away from whatever your family is, having done something that you never did, that you were never close to, and put you in a cage. And in a death chamber. It’s not a joke.”

Posted in Al Jazeera, American justice, capital punishment, criminal justice USA, death penalty, Death Row, FBI hair review, Fly Manning, forensic hair testimony, forensics, hair testimony, Injustice, junk science, Mississippi, prosecutorial misconduct, USA injustice, Willie Fly Manning, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“We were paid to lie and say that he did it.”

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Justice for Willie

In the course of the Al Jazeera program, Flawed Forensics (episode 3 in the Al Jazeera series, The System), the documentary team investigates Willie’s second case, involving the murder of two elderly African American women in 1993. The program highlights the revelations of a trial witness in this case; these cast doubt on how Willie has been treated by the system. The witness is Likeesha Harris (former girlfriend of Kevin Lucious, who testified as the key trial witness against Willie). She tells what happened after the murders:

“When the two elderly ladies were killed the murders took place in Brookville Garden and it’s like five minutes away from me. My baby’s dad was in my life. His name was Kevin Lucious. The police got in touch with Kevin in St Louis, Missouri. He was being charged on a double murder. (Sheriff) Dolph Bryan and they went up there and spoke with Kevin and said they could get him off the murder charges up there if he cooperated with a murder trial that’s going on down here.

“Dolph Bryan and Forrest Allgood (prosecutor) he came by and said they was going to charge me and Kevin with the murders if we didn’t cooperate. And so I told them I didn’t know anything. And they told me they knew I had a newborn baby and it was real intimidating thinking I was going to lose my child. And they was making me feel like I was going to be in jail for a long time. They wanted me to write out a statement stating that I was living in the Garden, and that me, Kevin and my daughter was looking out the window and that we witnessed Fly, Willie Manning, kick open – get into the door and run out with bloody clothes on. And… that wasn’t true. I didn’t witness nothing. I didn’t follow anyone.

“But I know for a fact that he… did not kill those two black ladies because we were paid to lie and say that he did it.”

Likeesha Harris becomes emotional as she recounts her regret at what she did under pressure when she was young and vulnerable:

“But I did apologise to him for what I had … what I had … what my boyfriend had done … to make him … to do all these years … I did apologise because I was sorry, but I was young at the time and I was scared and I didn’t know what else to do, and I didn’t want to go to jail and I had me a baby.”

To make it plain that this witness is not lying now, the program reveals police canvass notes made in the days following the murders; these substantiate her account (see page 36 of the document). They show that Likeesha Harris and Kevin Lucious were not living in Brookville Garden at the time of the murders.  (The murders occurred on January 18, 1993; Harris and Lucious moved into Apartment 11-E on February 1, 1993; Apartment 11-E was vacant when the murders happened. The police canvass notes were not disclosed by prosecutors to Willie’s trial counsel.)

Both Likeesha Harris and Kevin Lucious formally recanted their trial evidence in 2011.  An interview with the Sheriff was requested during the making of the documentary, but he declined.

This case is currently being considered by the Mississippi Supreme Court; you can read about both Willie’s cases on the home page of this website.

Although Likeesha Harris has previously recanted her trial testimony in court, her interview in this documentary makes that recantation more powerful. We are very grateful to her for deciding to publicize her earlier perjury, though this is something that clearly still gives her both pain and regret.

Posted in Al Jazeera, Brookville Garden murders, capital punishment, confession made under pressure, criminal justice USA, death penalty, Death Row, Fly Manning, incentivized witness testimony, Injustice, Innocent, law enforcement USA, Mississippi corruption, Mississippi judicial system, perjured witness testimony, prosecutor misconduct, recanting witness, Willie Jerome Manning, Willie Manning, witness pressured, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment