Mississippi Today
AG seeks execution dates for two death row inmates
Attorney General Lynn Fitch is asking the Supreme Court to set execution dates for two men on death row.
The Thursday motions are for 55-year-old Willie Jerome Manning, who has been on death row for nearly 30 years, and 60-year-old Robert Simon Jr., who has been there for over 30 years.
Fitch’s office wants the court to set execution dates within the next 30 days.
The state’s most recent execution was last year when Thomas Loden Jr. was put to death a week and a half before Christmas.
Willie Jerome Manning was convicted of shooting Mississippi State University students Tiffany Miller and Jon Steckler in 1994.
Manning has maintained his innocence. After a direct appeal, federal court proceedings, a motion for post-conviction relief and an attempt to have the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case, the state asked for Manning’s execution date to be reset for May 2013.
That execution was stayed, and Manning was able to file another post-conviction relief petition, including having DNA evidence tested and expert fingerprint analysis performed in the trial court, according to court records.
The attorney general’s office has asked for the stay of execution to be lifted and for the court to dismiss a second successive post-conviction relief motion so that Manning’s execution date can be set.
“Manning’s pending motion is a blatant attempt to delay his lawful execution,” the AG’s motion states.
Manning’s second motion for post-conviction relief, filed in September, argues that the state pursued a weak case with no DNA or physical evidence to link him to the murders.
The Office of Post-Conviction Counsel, which represents Manning, said in a Friday statement that the state hasn’t resonded to the petition or considered the evidence.
“Executions are not the place to act first and ask questions later,” the office said in a statement.
The limited evidence had deteriorated, scientific developments have undermined previous analysis and identification used in the case and key witnesses have admitted that their testimony was fabricated in exchange for favorable treatment from the state, according to the statement.
“The brutal murders of these two young people were tragic. Their families deserve justice,” the office said in its statement. “However, a death sentence based on false forensic evidence and fabricated witness testimony is not justice.”
Manning has already been exonerated in another double murder case.
In 1993, he was accused of killing 90-year old Alberta Jordan and her 60-year-old daughter Emmoline Jimmerson in their Starkville apartment, and convicted for their murders in 1996. Manning was simultaneously fighting convictions in this case and the murders of the MSU students.
The Mississippi Supreme Court ordered a new trial in the case, and the Oktibbeha County District Attorney dismissed the charges, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
Robert Simon Jr. was convicted with co-defendant Anthony Carr, who is also on death row, of murdering a Quitman County family in 1990: Parents Carl and Bobbie Jo and their children, 12-year-old Gregory and 9-year-old Charlotte.
Simon and Carr broke into the home, shot the family and set the residence on fire. Simon was separately convicted for the murder, kidnapping and sexual battery of Charlotte.
He had been scheduled to be executed in May 2011, but a federal appeals court ordered a stay to evaluate a claim that he was mentally incompetent due to a brain injury from a fall and resulting memory loss, according to court records. The court rejected Simon’s claim.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that those who are mentally disabled can’t be executed, but across the country those with an intellectual disability remain in prison or are put to death due to the action states have taken to define intellectual disability and set requirements, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1946
Dec. 23, 1946
University of Tennessee refused to play a basketball game with Duquesne University, because they had a Black player, Chuck Cooper. Despite their refusal, the all-American player and U.S. Navy veteran went on to become the first Black player to participate in a college basketball game south of the Mason-Dixon line. Cooper became the first Black player ever drafted in the NBA — drafted by the Boston Celtics. He went on to be admitted to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Podcast: Ray Higgins: PERS needs both extra cash and benefit changes for future employees
Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison talks with Ray Higgins, executive director of the Mississippi Public Employees Retirement System, about proposed changes in pension benefits for future employees and what is needed to protect the system for current employees and retirees. Higgins also stresses the importance of the massive system to the Mississippi economy.
READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
‘Bringing mental health into the spaces where moms already are’: UMMC program takes off
A program aimed at increasing access to mental health services for mothers has taken off at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
The program, called CHAMP4Moms, is an extension of an existing program called CHAMP – which stands for Child Access to Mental Health and Psychiatry. The goal is to make it easier for moms to reach mental health resources during a phase when some may need it the most and have the least time.
CHAMP4Moms offers a direct phone line that health providers can call if they are caring for a pregnant woman or new mother they believe may have unaddressed mental health issues. On the line, health providers can speak directly to a reproductive psychiatrist who can guide them on how to screen, diagnose and treat mothers. That means that moms don’t have to go out of their way to find a psychiatrist, and health care providers who don’t have extensive training in psychiatry can still help these women.
“Basically, we’re trying to bring mental health into the spaces where moms already are,” explained Calandrea Taylor, the program manager. “Because of the low workforce that we have in the state, it’s a lot to try to fill the state with mental health providers. But what we do is bring the mental health practice to you and where mothers are. And we’re hoping that that reduces stigma.”
Launched in 2023, the program has had a slow lift off, Taylor said. But the phone line is up and running, as the team continues to make additions to the program – including a website with resources that Taylor expects will go live next year.
To fill the role of medical director, UMMC brought in a California-based reproductive psychiatrist, Dr. Emily Dossett. Dossett, who grew up in Mississippi and still has family in the state, says it has been rewarding to come full circle and serve her home state – which suffers a dearth of mental health providers and has no reproductive psychiatrists.
“I love it. It’s really satisfying to take the experience I’ve been able to pull together over the past 20 years practicing medicine and then apply it to a place I love,” Dossett said. “I feel like I understand the people I work with, I relate to them, I like hearing where they’re from and being able to picture it … That piece of it has really been very much a joy.”
As medical director, Dossett is able to educate maternal health providers on mental health issues. But she’s also an affiliate professor at UMMC, which she says allows her to train up the next generation of psychiatrists on the importance of maternal and reproductive psychiatry – an often-overlooked aspect in the field.
If people think of reproductive mental health at all, they likely think of postpartum depression, Dossett said. But reproductive psychiatry is far more encompassing than just the postpartum time period – and includes many more conditions than just depression.
“Most reproductive psychiatrists work with pregnant and postpartum people, but there’s also work to be done around people who have issues connected to their menstrual cycle or perimenopause,” she explained. “… There’s depression, certainly. But we actually see more anxiety, which comes in lots of different forms – it can be panic disorder, general anxiety, OCD.”
Tackling mental health in this population doesn’t just improve people’s quality of life. It can be lifesaving – and has the potential to mitigate some of the state’s worst health metrics.
Mental health disorders are the leading cause of pregnancy-related death, which is defined by the Centers for Disease Control as any death up to a year postpartum that is caused by or worsened by pregnancy.
In Mississippi, 80% of pregnancy-related deaths between 2016 and 2020 were deemed preventable, according to the latest Mississippi Maternal Mortality Report.
Mississippi is not alone in this, Dossett said. Historically, mental health has not been taken seriously in the western world, for a number of reasons – including stigma and a somewhat arbitrary division between mind and body, Dossett explained.
“You see commercials on TV of happy pregnant ladies. You see magazines of celebrities and their baby bumps, and everybody is super happy. And so, if you don’t feel that way, there’s this tremendous amount of shame … But another part of it is medicine and the way that our health system is set up, it’s just classically divided between physical and mental health.”
Dossett encourages women to tell their doctor about any challenges they’re facing – even if they seem normal.
“There are a lot of people who have significant symptoms, but they think it’s normal,” Dossett said. “They don’t know that there’s a difference between the sort of normal adjustment that people have after having a baby – and it is a huge adjustment – and symptoms that get in the way of their ability to connect or bond with the baby, or their ability to eat or sleep, or take care of their other children or eventually go to work.”
She also encourages health care providers to develop a basic understanding of mental health issues and to ask patients questions about their mood, thoughts and feelings.
CHAMP4Moms is a resource Dossett hopes providers will take advantage of – but she also hopes they will shape and inform the program in its inaugural year.
“We’re available, we’re open for calls, we’re open for feedback and suggestions, we’re open for collaboration,” she said. “We want this to be something that can hopefully really move the needle on perinatal mental health and substance use in the state – and I think it can.”
Providers can call the CHAMP main line at 601-984-2080 for resources and referral options throughout the state.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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