MISSISSIPPI – Test the evidence.
That’s what Willie Jerome Manning and his legal team has been asking the state of Mississippi to do for the past 10 years, since being sentenced to death in 1994 for killing two white Mississippi State University students.
Jon Steckler’s and Tiffany Miller’s bodies were found Dec. 11, 1992.
Both were shot to death.
Miller’s car was missing but was located the next day. Manning was arrested after allegedly trying to sell the victims’ items. The evidence used to convict him was incriminating but not exact.
While hairs from an African-American male were found in Miller’s vehicle, DNA analysis was not sophisticated enough at that time to determine if they actually belonged to Manning.
It didn’t matter.
Manning was convicted for both murders and sentenced to death, even though he maintained his innocence throughout the case.
And after nearly 20 years, Manning is set to be executed on today (May 7th) even with new testing technology that could exonerate him and point to the real killer if he is indeed innocent as he claims.
Unfortunately, Manning’s case is tragic but not uncommon.
Amnesty International reports that since 1977, the overwhelming majority of death row inmates have been executed for killing whites, even though Blacks make up about half of homicide victims.
