Mississippi is scheduled to execute Willie Manning on Tuesday for his 1994 conviction for two murders. Mr. Manning is seeking DNA testing of hair, fingernail scrapings and other evidence connected to the crimes. His lawyers argue that no physical evidence links him to the crimes and that DNA testing could prove him innocent and identify another killer.
But last week, by 5-4, the Mississippi Supreme Court approved the state's motion to proceed with the execution, having denied Mr. Manning's motion for DNA testing last month by the same vote.
Since 1989 in the United States, there have been 306 people exonerated by DNA evidence after they were convicted, 18 on death row. In seven previous cases, DNA testing has exonerated men convicted and imprisoned in Mississippi. In each case, the killer left DNA at the crime scene.
Last week, the Justice Department provided extraordinary grounds for the state to allow DNA testing in the Manning case. In a letter to the prosecution and defense, the department said that testimony of an F.B.I. analyst who was a key prosecution witness "exceeded the limits of the science and was, therefore, invalid."
That analyst testified that he could match a hair found at the crime scene to an individual with "a relatively high degree of certainty" and that the hair fragments collected from a victim's car "came from an individual of the black race." The Justice Department concluded that it was "error for an examiner to testify that he can determine that the questioned hairs were from an individual of a particular racial group."
The F.B.I. has now offered to do the DNA testing requested by Mr. Manning, who is black. One dissenting opinion from the Mississippi Supreme Court said, "In asking the jury to convict Manning, an African American, of the murder of two white students, the prosecution seems to have placed great emphasis on the fact that hair samples, originating from an African American" were found in the car. The prosecution, however, did not connect the hair to Mr. Manning. Clearly, the Justice Department's letter makes the emphasis placed on the hair samples deeply problematic.
Mr. Manning's lawyers went back to the Mississippi Supreme Court on Monday to ask that the court stay his execution and set aside his convictions based on the Justice Department's acknowledgment that the F.B.I. analyst's testimony was false. That new evidence is crucial and stunning. The court should stay the execution and let the DNA testing go forward, but if it does not, then Gov. Phil Bryant must do that.
The whole case underscores the often racially discriminatory application of the death penalty in cases where the victims are white and the defendants are black, one of many reasons that capital punishment should be abolished.
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