Skip to main content

Mississippi Supreme Court Denies Additional DNA Testing to Death-Row Prisoner

The Mississippi Supreme Court has denied additional DNA testing to death-row prisoner Willie Manning. Manning, who was sentenced to death in Oktibbeha County in 1994 and in 1996 for 2 separate crimes, has maintained his innocence of both crimes. He was exonerated of the 1996 conviction in 2015 after police and prosecutors unlawfully withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense.

Manning sought DNA testing in the 1994 case to challenge discredited hair comparison testimony presented by a prosecution expert. After initial DNA tests were inconclusive, the trial court in 2020 refused to authorize the transfer of the evidence to a different lab that was capable of conducting more sophisticated testing. On June 30, 2022, the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld that ruling, holding that “Manning has failed to show that a full DNA profile, if gained from additional testing, would have raised a reasonable probability that the trier of fact would have come to a different outcome.”

Manning, who is Black, was sentenced to death in 1994 for the murders of 2 white Mississippi State University students. At trial, the State presented testimony from an FBI agent stating that hairs found in one of the victim’s vehicles was from an African American. The prosecutor referred to this testimony in his closing argument, saying this implicated Manning because of his race. The agent also testified regarding ballistics evidence recovered from the scene. Nearly 10 years later, shortly before Manning was scheduled to be executed in 2013, the United States Department of Justice said that the FBI agent’s testimony at trial was seriously flawed. Because of this, the Mississippi Supreme Court voted 8-1 to delay Manning’s execution and allow DNA testing of the physical evidence from the case.

In August 2014, the Mississippi circuit court entered an agreed order to send newly discovered physical evidence to a DNA testing facility. Over the course of six years, that testing facility tested multiple pieces of physical evidence found at the crime scene, including a rape kit, fingernail scrapings, and the hairs that the FBI agent testified about at trial. The testing facility said that the tests all produced inconclusive results, but that a different, more specialized facility may be able to get conclusive results from the evidence within three to 4 months.

The circuit court denied Manning’s motion to allow more time for testing and for the transfer of evidence to the new facility. On appeal, the Mississippi Supreme Court agreed with the circuit court that Manning had not shown that the new facility would be able to obtain conclusive results, and further, that if it did obtain conclusive results, that those results would serve to exonerate Manning. Writing for the majority, Justice Robert Chamberlain said “If additional testing had been granted and another individual’s DNA profile was discovered from the crime scene evidence, no proof has been shown that it would change the outcome of Manning’s case.”

Manning’s attorney, Rob Mink said he is disappointed in the ruling, adding that he had hoped the results would exonerate Manning. Mink told the Associated Press that they are “considering right now what options [Manning] has for additional relief.”

In dissent, Justice Leslie King, joined by Justice Jim Kitchens, stressed the importance of DNA evidence in death penalty cases. Justice King, who is the only Black justice on the Mississippi Supreme Court, referenced multiple cases that showed that “DNA testing could potentially lead to the true perpetrator of the crime, even when strong circumstantial evidence and direct evidence were presented at trial.” Justice King also pointed out that the new facility claimed they could conduct the new testing within three or four months, which is “surely minimal considering that Manning has been sentenced to death” and “had spent almost 20 years in prison before this Court granted his motion to test the evidence.”

When Manning faced execution for this crime in 2013, Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld of the New York-based Innocence Project strongly supported the testing. In an op-ed in the Clarion Ledger, they argued: “While people can differ on whether the death penalty is an appropriate form of punishment, nearly everyone would agree that it should be used only in those cases where we are certain of guilt. DNA testing could provide that certainty or prove, as Manning insists, that he is innocent.”

Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Staff, July 15, 2022





🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.


Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!



"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Popular posts from this blog

Biden Commuted Their Death Sentences. Now What?

As three men challenge their commutations, others brace for imminent prison transfers and the finality of a life sentence with no chance of release. In the days after President Joe Biden commuted his death sentence, 40-year-old Rejon Taylor felt like he’d been reborn. After facing execution for virtually his entire adult life for a crime he committed at 18, he was fueled by a new sense of purpose. He was “a man on a mission,” he told me in an email on Christmas Day. “I will not squander this opportunity of mercy, of life.”

Saudi Arabia executes Somali national, Saudi citizen

Mogadishu (HOL) — Saudi authorities executed a Somali national convicted of drug smuggling and a Saudi citizen found guilty of murder, the Ministry of Interior announced on Sunday. The Somali national, identified as Mohamed Nur Hussein Ja'al, was arrested for attempting to smuggle hashish into Saudi Arabia. A specialized court found him guilty and sentenced him to death under tazir punishment, a discretionary ruling in Islamic law for severe crimes. After an appeal, the Supreme Court upheld the sentence, and a royal decree authorized the execution, which was carried out on Sunday in Najran, southern Saudi Arabia.

Todd Willingham: Ex-wife says convicted killer confessed

The former wife of a man whose 2004 execution in Texas has become a source of controversy has said he admitted setting the fire that killed their three daughters during a final prison meeting just weeks before he was put to death, according to a Texas newspaper. Stacy Kuykendall, the ex-wife of Cameron Todd Willingham, said in a statement to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram published Sunday that Willingham told her he was upset by threats to divorce him after the new year. The fire that killed the couple's three girls was Dec. 23, 1991. Her last threat to divorce him, she said in a statement, occurred the night before the fire. "He said if I didn't have my girls I couldn't leave him and that I could never have Amber or the twins with anyone else but him," according to the statement from Kuykendall to the newspaper. Willingham went to his death proclaiming his innocence. And over the years, she has offered differing accounts. A Tribune investigation in 2004 showed the...

Alabama executes Demetrius Frazier

Alabama puts man to death in the nation's fourth execution using nitrogen gas ATMORE, Ala. — A man convicted of murdering a woman after breaking into her apartment as she slept was put to death Thursday evening in Alabama in the nation's fourth execution using nitrogen gas. Demetrius Frazier, 52, was pronounced dead at 6:36 p.m. at a south Alabama prison for his murder conviction in the 1991 rape and killing of Pauline Brown, 41. It was the first execution in Alabama this year and the third in the U.S. in 2025, following a lethal injection Wednesday in Texas and another last Friday in South Carolina.

Louisiana man with execution date next month dies at Angola

Christopher Sepulvado, the 81-year-old man who was facing execution next month for the 1992 murder of his stepson, died overnight at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, according to his attorney. Shawn Nolan, who had represented Sepulvado, said his client had had a gangrenous leg amputated last week at a New Orleans hospital. Doctors had determined Sepulvado, who had multiple serious ailments, was terminally ill and recommended hospice care at the time a judge set his execution date for March 17, according to his attorney.

Texas executes Steven Nelson

A man has been executed by lethal injection in the US state of Texas for the 2011 murder of a pastor that he insisted he did not commit. Steven Nelson, 37, spent more than a dozen years on death row for the murder of Clint Dobson, 28, during a robbery of the NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington, near Dallas. Judy Elliott, the church secretary, was also badly beaten during the robbery but survived.

U.S. | AG Bondi orders federal inmate transferred for execution

President Donald Trump's newly installed attorney general, Pam Bondi, has ordered the transfer of a federal inmate to Oklahoma so he can be executed, following through on Trump's sweeping executive order to more actively support the death penalty. Bondi this week directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer inmate George John Hanson, 60, so that he can be executed for his role in the kidnapping and killing of a 77-year-old woman in Tulsa in 1999.

Singapore | Pannir set to be executed on Feb 20

His former lawyer, M Ravi, says the only recourse now is for the Malaysian government to file an urgent application to the International Court of Justice challenging the execution. PETALING JAYA: Pannir Selvam Pranthaman, the 38-year-old Malaysian convicted of drug trafficking in Singapore, will be executed on Thursday (Feb 20), according to his former lawyer, M Ravi. In a Facebook post today, Ravi said Pannir’s sister told him that she had received a letter from the prison today confirming his execution in four days. Ravi claimed that during his time representing Pannir in 2020, Singapore’s prison authorities improperly forwarded confidential information on 13 inmates to the Singapore Attorney-General’s Chambers.

‘Here we are again’: Death row Canadian waits as Montana looks at resuming executions

The fate of a Canadian who has been on death row in Montana for the past 42 years has been thrown into more uncertainty as state legislators try again to remove obstacles to resuming executions.  Ronald Smith, 67, is originally from Red Deer, Alta., and has been on death row since 1983, a year after he and another man, high on LSD and alcohol, shot and killed two young Indigenous cousins near East Glacier, Mont.  Time moves slowly at Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, Mont. where Smith has been described as a model prisoner for four decades. But almost like clockwork every two years, another attempt to allow the state to resume executions begins in the Montana legislature.

Singapore Court Of Appeal Grants Stay Of Execution To Pannir Selvam

SINGAPORE, Feb 19 (Bernama) -- Singapore Court of Appeal on Wednesday has granted Malaysian death row inmate Pannir Selvam Pranthaman a stay of execution just hours before he was scheduled to be executed on Thursday (Feb 20). Judge of the Appellate Division Woo Bih Li, in his judgment, said the stay was granted pending the determination of Pannir Selvam’s Post-Appeal Applications in Capital Cases (PACC) application.