Mississippi Today
Do these death row inmates have legal options to avoid execution? State AG’s office and defense attorneys disagree
The state and attorneys representing two men on death row are in conflict about whether legal options still exist for them to challenge their convictions or to proceed with their executions.
In court documents, attorneys from Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office said Willie Jerome Manning and Robert Simon Jr., who have each been on death row for 30 years, have exhausted their legal options at the state and federal level, so it’s time to set their executions.
But attorneys representing them from the Office of Post-Conviction Counsel disagree, saying the men’s post-conviction relief petitions are still making their way through the court system and note that the Supreme Court, by law, is not required to set an execution if there is pending litigation.
“If a death-row inmate whose state and federal remedies have been exhausted could create an impediment to setting an execution date simply by filing another successive PCR motion, the State could never carry out lawful death sentences,” Fitch’s office wrote in its motion to set Manning’s execution.
On Monday, a spokesperson from Fitch’s office cited statute and case law, saying those determine the number of appeals a person is entitled to, and the courts ultimately decide whether someone has exhausted all of their legal remedies.
It would appear the court and even the AG‘s office already did decide these two death row inmates haven’t exhausted them.
Last week, all nine justices of the Supreme Court agreed that it would not set Manning’s execution date until his post-conviction relief petition is reviewed. With the state’s Dec. 29 deadline to respond to Manning’s petition and his attorney’s 15-day deadline to respond, the earliest his execution could take place is mid January 2024.
In an April hearing for a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s lethal injection protocol that Simon has joined, the state recognized Simon was pursuing post-conviction relief.
“Until that habeas (post-conviction) petition is filed and resolved, the State would not move for execution in his case,” Special Assistant Attorney General Gerald Kucia told U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate.
A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office did not comment specifically about how attorneys from the office determined that dates should be set for Manning and Simon despite ongoing legal action.
One remaining avenue for relief is clemency from Gov. Tate Reeves, who during his first term in office has not granted it to anyone.
Simon, now 60, was convicted with co-defendant Anthony Carr, who is also on death row, of killing the Parker family in Quitman County in 1990. Simon and Carr broke into the home of Carl and Bobbie Jo and their two children while the family was at church. They shot the family members when they returned home and set the house on fire.
Simon and Carr received death sentences for killing the Parker parents and 12-year-old Gregory. Simon was separately convicted for the murder, kidnapping and sexual battery of 9-year-old Charlotte and received a life sentence.
In October, the Mississippi Supreme Court appointed the attorneys from the Office of Post-Conviction Counsel to represent Simon, and his attorneys said he has a constitutional right to effective assistance of post-conviction counsel and to file a successive petition for relief because his previous post-conviction legal team was ineffective.
Over the years Simon has had multiple attorneys, including one who was disbarred. Others moved out of state or no longer work on capital murder cases.
His attorneys say previous legal teams didn’t retain an expert to evaluate Simon’s mental health and they failed to seek funding for a proper post-conviction expert to delve into Simon’s history of trauma, head injuries and exposure to toxins.
Experts were also not hired to determine whether Simon is intellectually disabled under the U.S. Supreme Court case Atkins v. Virginia, which prevents the execution of intellectually disabled people, according to court records.
He had previously been scheduled to be executed in May 2011, but a federal appeals court ordered a stay to determine whether Simon was mentally incompetent from a brain injury and memory loss from a fall, according to court records. The Mississippi Supreme Court later rejected Simon’s claim.
Simon’s attorneys on Nov. 21 filed a successive petition for post-conviction relief and raised claims about his mental competency and whether he can be executed, ineffective post-conviction counsel and a lack of experts to evaluate his mental health and present potential mitigating evidence.
“Simon has never had the opportunity to challenge the ineffectiveness of post-conviction counsel—until now,” the petition states.
Based on the claims raised, Simon’s attorneys are asking for his death sentence to be reversed.
Manning, now 55, was convicted of shooting Mississippi State University students Tiffany Miller and Jon Steckler in 1994. He has maintained his innocence.
Two days after asking for an extension to respond to Manning’s September post-conviction relief petition, Fitch’s office asked the Supreme Court to set an execution date and dismiss his successive petition.
Manning’s attorneys said in court records that state law provides a remedy for newly discovered evidence, and that the state was wrong to say that the statute prohibits successive post-conviction relief petitions.
His petition documents discoveries of new evidence about recanted and testimony by witnesses and questionable firearms evidence used in his case.
Manning has been allowed to test additional DNA and run additional analyses since 2013, when a stay was ordered for his execution, but in court documents the state argues that those results have been inconclusive and he is now exhausted his legal options.
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 1875
Nov. 2, 1875
The first Mississippi Plan, which included violence against Black Americans to keep them from voting, resulted in huge victories for white Democrats across the state.
A year earlier, the Republican Party had carried a majority of the votes, and many Black Mississippians had been elected to office. In the wake of those victories, white leagues arose to challenge Republican rule and began to use widespread violence and fraud to recapture control of the state.
Over several days in September 1875, about 50 Black Mississippians were killed along with white supporters, including a school teacher who worked with the Black community in Clinton.
The governor asked President Ulysses Grant to intervene, but he decided against intervening, and the violence and fraud continued. Other Southern states soon copied the Mississippi plan.
John R. Lynch, the last Black congressman for Mississippi until the 1986 election of Mike Espy, wrote: “It was a well-known fact that in 1875 nearly every Democratic club in the State was converted into an armed military company.”
A federal grand jury concluded: “Fraud, intimidation, and violence perpetrated at the last election is without a parallel in the annals of history.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Mississippi Today’s NewsMatch Campaign is Here: Support Journalism that Strengthens Mississippi
High-quality journalism like ours depends on reader support; without it, we simply couldn’t exist. That’s why we’re proud to join the NewsMatch movement, a national initiative aimed at raising $50 million for nonprofit newsrooms that serve communities like ours here in Mississippi, where access to reliable information has often been limited.
In a time when trusted journalists and media sources are disappearing, we believe the stakes couldn’t be higher. Without on-the-ground, trustworthy reporting, civic engagement suffers, accountability falters and corruption often goes unaddressed. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
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Every dollar raised strengthens our ability to serve you with fact-based journalism on issues that impact your everyday life—whether it’s covering local election issues or reporting on decisions affecting schools, safety and economic growth in Mississippi. Your support makes it possible for us to stay rooted in the community, offering nuanced perspectives that help Mississippians understand and engage with what’s happening around them.
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We’ll examine what’s at stake if local newsrooms lose press freedoms and will discuss how you, as members of the public, can help protect it. This event is open to Mississippi Today and Verite News members as a special thank-you for supporting local journalism and standing with us in this mission. Donate today to RSVP!
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This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Hinds County loses fight over control of jail
The Hinds County sheriff and Board of Supervisors have lost an appeal to prevent control of its jail by a court-appointed receiver and an injunction that orders the county to address unconstitutional conditions in the facility.
Two members from a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with decisions by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves to appoint a receiver to oversee day-to-day jail operations and keep parts of a previous consent decree in place to fix constitutional violations, including a failure to protect detainees from harm.
However, the appeals court called the new injunction “overly broad” in one area and is asking Reeves to reevaluate the scope of the receivership.
The injunction retained provisions relating to sexual assault, but the appeals court found the provisions were tied to general risk of violence at the jail, rather than specific concerns about the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The court reversed those points of the injunction and remanded them to the district court so the provisions can be removed.
The court also found that the receiver should not have authority over budgeting and staff salaries for the Raymond Detention Center, which could be seen as “federal intrusion into RDC’s budget” – especially if the receivership has no end date.
Hinds County Board of Supervisors President Robert Graham was not immediately available for comment Friday. Sheriff Tyree Jones declined to comment because he has not yet read the entire court opinion.
In 2016, the Department of Justice sued Hinds County alleging a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conditions in four of its detention facilities. The county and DOJ entered a consent decree with stipulated changes to make for the jail system, which holds people facing trial.
“But the decree did not resolve the dispute; to the contrary, a yearslong battle ensued in the district court as to whether and to what extent the County was complying with the consent decree,” the appeals court wrote.
This prompted Reeves to hold the county in contempt of court twice in 2022.
The county argued it was doing its best to comply with the consent decree and spending millions to fix the jail. One of the solutions they offered was building a new jail, which is now under construction in Jackson.
The county had a chance to further prove itself during three weeks of hearings held in February 2022. Focuses included the death of seven detainees in 2021 from assaults and suicide and issues with staffing, contraband, old infrastructure and use of force.
Seeing partial compliance by the county, in April 2022 Reeves dismissed the consent decree and issued a new, shorter injunction focused on the jail and removed some provisions from the decree.
But Reeves didn’t see improvement from there. In July 2022, he ordered receivership and wrote that it was needed because of an ongoing risk of unconstitutional harm to jail detainees and staff.
The county pushed back against federal oversight and filed an appeal, arguing that there isn’t sufficient evidence to show that there are current and ongoing constitutional violations at the jail and that the county has acted with deliberate indifference.
Days before the appointed receiver was set to take control of the jail at the beginning of 2023, the 5th Circuit Court ordered a stay to halt that receiver’s work. The new injunction ordered by Reeves was also stayed, and a three-person jail monitoring team that had been in place for years also was ordered to stop work.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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