PUBLISHER'S NOTE: WORDS TO HEED: FROM OUR POST ON KEVIN COOPER'S APPLICATION FOR POST-CONVICTION DNA TESTING; CALIFORNIA: (Applicable wherever a state resists DNA testing): "Blogger/extraordinaire Jeff Gamso's blunt, unequivocal, unforgettable message to the powers that be in California: "JUST TEST THE FUCKING DNA." (Oh yes, Gamso raises, as he does in many of his posts, an important philosophical question: This post is headed: "What is truth, said jesting Pilate."...Says Gamso: "So what's the harm? What, exactly, are they scared of? Don't we want the truth?")
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GIST: "Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch has asked the state Supreme Court to set execution dates for two men on death row.
Fitch’s office filed motions Thursday that asked the court to schedule executions for Willie Jerome Manning and Robert Simon Jr.
Manning, now 55, was convicted in 1994 on two counts of capital murder in the December 1992 killings of Mississippi State University students Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller in Oktibbeha County. Simon, 60, and another man were convicted in the 1990 Quitman County slayings of a family of four.
Manning and Simon were close to being executed more than a decade ago, only to have stays issued by the courts.
Krissy Nobile, Manning’s attorney and the director of the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, said Manning’s defense team petitioned in September for post-conviction relief based on “newly discovered evidence and scientific developments undermining Manning’s conviction.”
Attorneys submitted the petition days before the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request to have evidence in the case tested at a specialized laboratory.
The state has not responded to that petition or considered the evidence, Nobile said.
“The State instead is steamrolling toward execution even though there is compelling evidence that Manning may, in fact, be innocent,” Nobile said. “Executions are not the place to act first and ask questions later.”
In 2013, shortly before Manning was scheduled to be executed, the U.S. Justice Department said there had been errors in FBI agents’ testimony about ballistics tests and hair analysis in the case. Manning’s attorneys asked the Mississippi Supreme Court to stop the lethal injection, and justices voted 8-1 to delay the execution to allow the testing of evidence.
Manning’s attorneys said they hoped DNA testing would exonerate their client, who has maintained his innocence.
In 2014, they sent a rape kit, fingernail scrapings and other items to a laboratory.
In 2022, a majority of state Supreme Court justices wrote that Manning received “allegedly inconclusive results” after six years of fingerprint analysis and DNA testing.
Manning’s attorneys asked an Oktibbeha County circuit judge for permission to send items to a more specialized lab. The judge denied that request, and the ruling was upheld by the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Nobile called into question the reliability of hair analysis and firearms identification used at Manning’s trial.
She also said witnesses who had been incarcerated admitted their testimony was fabricated in exchange for money and sentence reductions.
Simon was just hours away from execution in May 2011 when a federal appeals court ordered a stay to ruling on a mental disability claim, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported.
The claim was later rejected.
An attorney listed for Simon, Johnnie E. Walls Jr., did not immediately respond to a phone message Friday.
Fitch’s separate motions called for the Mississippi Supreme Court to set the execution dates within the next 30 days. The motions say “no legal impediment exists” and since both Manning and Simon have “exhausted all state and federal remedies, this court should set an execution date.”
The motions were still pending before the court on Friday."
The entire story can be read at:
https://apnews.com/article/mississippi-supreme-court-execution-dates-44372b13f74db5831c58cccae24f8fd8PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction."
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-123488014\
