Willie Jerome Manning

Willie Jerome "Fly" Manning (born June 12, 1968) is on death row at Mississippi State Penitentiary, USA, with two death sentences for a conviction of double murder (Steckler-Miller murders). He was previously also convicted and sentenced to death for an unrelated double murder (Jimmerson-Jordan murders), but the State Supreme Court overturned this verdict and ordered a new trial. The charges against him for the Jimmerson-Jordan murders were then dropped, and the Death Penalty Information Center listed him as a 2015 death row exoneree for this case.

Steckler-Miller murders: background and trial Jon Steckler, 19, and Tiffany Miller, 22, were two students at Mississippi State University in Starkville. Jon Stephen Steckler was a sophomore majoring in forest resources. He was an athlete who played high school football for Cathedral High School and a practicing Catholic who served on the mission field in Mexico. He was also an outdoorsman and hunter. Pamela Tiffany Miller was a third-year sophomore (having taken a year off) from Madison, Mississippi, studying nursing.

On December 11, 1992, having been run over by Miller's car, a Toyota MR2. When law enforcement officers arrived, they found Miller's body in nearby woods. She had been shot twice, in the forehead and mouth. The evidence suggested that she had been sexually assaulted. Steckler died shortly afterward.

In the morning, Miller's car was found double-parked at an apartment complex in the vicinity of her trailer. A woman had seen the car parked outside the apartments at 1 a.m. (A witness told law enforcement that after midnight on the night of the murders, she heard a man yelling from the direction of Miller’s trailer. Two witnesses said they heard what sounded like a white man yelling, followed by two gunshots.) Miller's missing ring was found between her car and her trailer. The two students were, according to prosecutors, forced into Miller's car But there was no physical evidence linking Manning to the murders or the car burglary. In his defense, Manning said that he did not commit the murders and that he was at a club on the night of the murders. Two witnesses saw him at the 2500 Club around midnight on the night of the murders; one of them remembered declining Manning’s request for a lift. Manning’s legal team argued that the narrow timeframe made it impossible that he had committed the murders over 3 miles away. One of the items stolen was a gas station token. A very similar token was found at the scene of the killings, but it did not match Wise’s description of his missing token (such tokens were common then). Another stolen item was a portable CD player, which was traced by its serial number from Wise to a pawn shop in Jackson. The person who pawned it testified that he obtained it from Manning. According to an F.B.I. firearms expert, slugs recovered from the tree were fired from the same gun used to kill Steckler and Miller.

Manning's cousin said Manning had admitted to him that he and another man, Jesse James "One-Wing" Lawrence, had committed the murders, but Lawrence was in jail in Alabama at the time, and four people would not have fitted into Miller’s two-seater sports car.

2023 affidavits reveal that another witness also lied at the trial: his testimony, that he overheard Manning explaining to another man how he disposed of the murder weapon, was false.

Steckler-Miller murders: 2013 argument for new DNA testing, stay of execution, and subsequent developments Manning claimed that he should have DNA testing using technology that was not available at the time of his trial. He pointed out that multiple fingerprints found in Miller's car matched neither him nor the two victims.

Manning said that at his trial, the prosecutor, Forrest Allgood, illegally dismissed as potential jurors African Americans who read African American magazines because these were liberal publications.

Manning also argued that witnesses against him in the Steckler-Miller murders gave conflicting testimony and multiple versions of testimony, and that some of the trial witness testimony contradicted known facts. He said that his cousin made several different statements, earlier implicating two different men, but later stating that Manning confessed that he and a second man committed the murders.

Manning's lawyers also contended that Manning's former girlfriend, a key witness, was granted a favorable plea deal on fraud charges, in addition to almost $18,000, to reward her for testifying for the prosecution, arrangements which were not fully disclosed to the trial jury.

In a 5–4 ruling on April 25, 2013, the Mississippi Supreme Court denied his claims. Mississippians Educating for Smart Justice added that physical evidence from the murder scene (including hair from both victims' hands, scrapings from under their nails, and hair fragments from the car) would probably identify the murderer. Similarly, one of the dissenting judges, Justice James W. Kitchens, wrote: "whatever potential harm the denial seeks to avert is surely outweighed by the benefits of ensuring justice by the scientific analysis of all the trace evidence."

On May 3, 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation advised Mississippi officials that an examiner had overstated conclusions about the hair by suggesting it came from an African-American source. (Manning is African-American.) "We have determined that the microscopic hair comparison analysis testimony or laboratory report presented in this case included statements that exceeded the limits of science and were, therefore, invalid," the letter said. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood responded, "The Mississippi Supreme Court has held that the evidence is so overwhelming as to Manning's guilt [that] even if technologies were available to determine the source of the hair, to indicate someone other than Manning, it would not negate other evidence that shows his guilt."

Two FBI and U.S. Department of Justice letters, sent shortly before Manning's scheduled execution, addressed issues arising from FBI expert hair testimony at Manning's trial. One letter stated that an FBI examiner had misrepresented his findings about hair fibers, found in Miller's car, when he concluded that the hair came from an African American. The two victims were white, but Manning was black. This hair sample was the only physical evidence that connected Manning to the murder scene. The authorities stated, "We have determined that the microscopic hair comparison analysis testimony or laboratory report presented in this case included statements that exceeded the limits of science and were, therefore, invalid."

The third Department of Justice letter focused on ballistics testimony at the trial. A witness, Manning's former girlfriend, said she had once seen Manning firing a gun into a tree. The F.B.I. firearms expert testified that bullets found in the tree had been fired from the same gun as the bullets used in the murders. However, this testimony was later discredited. The Department of Justice letter stated: "The science regarding firearms examinations does not permit examiner testimony that a specific gun fired a specific bullet to the exclusion of all other guns in the world. The examiner could testify to that information to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, but not absolutely. He added, "As with any process involving human judgment, claims of infallibility or impossibility of error are not supported by scientific standards."

Approximately four hours before the scheduled time of execution on May 7, 2013, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled 8-1 to grant Manning a stay of execution. The judges gave no reason for this decision.

On July 25, 2013, the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed its earlier 5–4 ruling preventing the testing of fingerprints and DNA evidence. The new ruling, which was unanimous, gave Manning 60 days to file a brief requesting analysis of both.

In 2013 Miller's mother Pamela Cole, told a reporter that Manning's death would bring her peace but no closure. She expressed sadness about the 21 years she had spent missing her daughter.

Manning's lawyers stated, "A finding by the circuit court that Manning's conviction in the Brooksville Gardens case [Jimmerson-Jordan murders] was procured based on false testimony would also be relevant to the claims in this case (the college students) because it would show a pattern of reliance on testimony procured unfairly."

Tucker Carrington, director of the Mississippi Innocence Project, commented, "In my mind, the state had written Willie off,… Who gives a fuck about this guy? He's already condemned."

In 2019 the hair evidence from this case was submitted for mitochondrial testing; however, the lab chosen by Manning’s team and the state was unable to obtain a DNA profile, because of the age and deterioration of the samples.

In September, 2023, Manning’s attorneys filed a petition for post-conviction relief; this introduced substantial new evidence that could invalidate much of the testimony at Manning’s trial. Instead of responding, the state filed a request for Manning’s petition to be dismissed and an execution date to be set. But the Mississippi Supreme Court agreed to consider Manning’s petition, and temporarily delayed a decision about whether to set an execution date.

In Manning’s petition for post-conviction relief, he argued that, because no physical evidence linked him to the murders or the car burglary, the state had resorted to using jailhouse informants.

In 2024, the American Civil Liberties Union joined the case as a friend of the court, partnering with the Innocence Project. The aim of both organizations was to appeal to the Supreme Court, and reverse the decision preventing Manning from seeking further legal action. The organizations wanted Manning to get a new trial to present previously unused evidence, which could challenge Manning's conviction.

Jimmerson-Jordan murders: background and trial On the evening of January 18, 1993, Martin Luther King Day, about five weeks after the Steckler-Miller double murder, 90-year-old Emmoline Jimmerson and her 60-year-old daughter, Albertha Jordan, were murdered during an attempted robbery at their apartment in Starkville. The victims were beaten, and their throats slashed. The coroner testified that both women were beaten on their heads and chests with an iron so severely that those wounds would have been fatal even if their throats hadn't been slashed with a kitchen knife at least ten minutes after the iron attack.

The state's key witness, Kevin Lucious (who has been serving two life sentences without parole in St. Louis, Missouri, since the mid-1990s, for murder convictions there), testified that he saw Manning enter the Jimmerson-Jordan apartment on the night of the murders. Lucious also testified that Manning told him he wouldn't have done it if he'd known they only had $12. He testified that Manning said, "it wasn't anything to kill someone, and sometimes you have to kill someone to get the respect you deserve." Manning told police he had not been at the apartment complex on MLK Day, but in addition to Lucious, five other eyewitnesses placed him there, including Herbert Ashford, who not only saw Manning in the vicinity of the apartments on MLK Day but also testified that Manning later said he should have done more violence to the victims than he did

Lucious was the only eyewitness to testify that he saw Manning enter the women's home. No witnesses said they saw Manning leave that apartment. Manning was convicted of the murders of Jimmerson and Jordan on July 24, 1996. The jury sentenced Manning to death.

Jimmerson-Jordan murders: appeals leading to charges being dropped In 2000, after the county court determined there had been no Batson violation, the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and death sentence. Manning then pursued another review by the Mississippi Supreme Court. The court in 2004 granted Manning leave "to seek post-conviction relief at an evidentiary hearing in the trial court on the issues of whether the State withheld exculpatory evidence, whether the State presented false evidence and whether Manning was denied effective assistance of counsel both at trial and on appeal," but otherwise upheld his conviction and death sentence.

Lucious formally recanted his testimony in 2011. He also filed affidavits stating that his statements given to authorities and his testimony at Manning's 1996 trial were false and coerced by authorities because he was afraid he would be charged with the murders. He said that law enforcement produced the information for him to use when testifying. He added that he had told police that someone different had confessed to the murders.

On February 12, 2015, the Mississippi Supreme Court, by a vote of 7-2, granted Manning a new trial in the Jimmerson-Jordan murders, holding that prosecutors had withheld potentially exculpatory information from the defense. The Court said when Starkville police knocked on doors at the complex, they found that the apartment where Lucious claimed to live was, in fact, vacant when the crime occurred;

The charges against Manning were dropped on April 21, 2015. The Death Penalty Information Center's 2015 annual survey lists Manning as one of the six death row exonerees in 2015.