Mississippi Today
Willie Manning faces execution, despite a crumbling case
When death row speaks
It comes truly from the heart
It’s a lonely situation
The frustration’s just a start.
— Willie Manning
Unless a court intervenes, the state of Mississippi will execute Willie Manning, despite the fact much of the case against him has crumbled.
If the Mississippi Supreme Court doesn’t give Manning another hearing, justices are expected to grant Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s request to set an execution date.
He remains on death row, convicted of the 1992 murders of two Mississippi State University students, Jon Stephen Steckler and Pamela Tiffany Miller, but the scientific evidence that helped convict him has gone up in smoke.
At trial, an FBI examiner told jurors that bullets fired into a tree, allegedly by Manning, matched those used to kill the couple to the exclusion of all other guns. The FBI later said such a conclusion was not supported by scientific standards.
Another FBI examiner testified that hairs found in Miller’s car belonged to someone Black. Steckler and Miller were white, and Manning is Black. The FBI later called such hair analysis invalid.
Beyond such evidence, the jailhouse informant who implicated Manning has since recanted.
“In this case, there are no fingerprints, fibers, DNA, or other physical evidence linking Manning to the murders or the victims,” wrote Manning’s defense team, which includes attorneys David Voisin and Robert Mink Sr. as well as Krissy C. Nobile, director of the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel. “All that remains in his case is recanted testimony and debunked forensic science.”
Fitch said Manning needs to be executed.
“The Court should not allow Manning to abuse the system by citing inapplicable rules, raising baseless claims, and incorrectly relying on this Court’s precedent to further delay execution of his lawful punishment,” she told the justices. “This Court should reject Manning’s latest attempt to further delay execution of his lawful sentence imposed thirty years ago.”
Two double homicides
Two weeks before Christmas in 1992, Mississippi State students were celebrating the end of final exams when the bodies of 19-year-old Steckler and 22-year-old Miller were found on a blood-spattered road at 2:15 a.m., a little more than an hour after they were last seen leaving Steckler’s fraternity house.
Steckler had been shot and run over by Miller’s car. She had been shot twice, and one leg was out of her pants and underwear, but authorities found no evidence of sexual assault.
A month later, the bodies of 90-year-old Alberta Jordan and her 60-year-old daughter, Emmoline Jimmerson, were found slashed to death in their apartment in Starkville.
Both double homicides went unsolved.
The couple’s murders took place on the same night that Steckler’s fraternity brother, John Wise, had his Chrysler Eagle Talon burglarized. He said several items were stolen from his car: a CD player, a silver huggie, a leather bomber jacket and $10 in change, plus a restroom token. Steckler’s watch, gold necklace and Cathedral High School class ring were also missing. So was Miller’s ring.
Wise identified the token found at the murder scene as identical to the one taken from his car, and authorities theorized that Steckler and Miller had interrupted a burglary outside the fraternity house.
In April 1993, firefighters in Starkville found a silver huggie, which Wise identified as his. At this point, Manning became a primary suspect, Oktibbeha County Sheriff Dolph Bryan testified, but he didn’t explain why. Manning lived out of town, five miles from where the huggie was found.
A month later, the sheriff arrested Manning, previously convicted of burglary, robbery and grand larceny, and charged him with both double homicides.
A day later, the sheriff got a visit from Earl Jordan, who was back in jail after spending more than two years in prison. He had been on the sheriff’s list of suspects because he and another man had reportedly barged into a fraternity house, swiped cash, threatened to steal a car and said, “We are not afraid to kill anybody.”
He told the sheriff that his cousin, Manning, had admitted burglarizing a car with another man, that they forced Steckler and Miller into her car, drove them to a remote location and killed them.
Jailhouse snitches seeking deals
Manning went on trial for the murders of Steckler and Miller.
Witnesses testified that Manning attempted to sell a ring and watch matching the general description of Steckler’s missing jewelry.
Wise testified about the items stolen from his car and identified the token found at the murder scene as identical to the restroom token stolen from his car. One witness said Manning sold him a CD player, which matched the serial number of Wise’s CD player.
Manning admitted he fenced the CD player, according to the sheriff’s notes, but he repeatedly denied being responsible for the couple’s murders.
At trial, two jailhouse informants told the jury, made up of 10 white and two Black jurors, about statements they said Manning had made. Jordan testified that Manning confessed to the murders, and Frank Parker said he overheard Manning talk about selling a gun.
Manning’s former girlfriend, Paula Hathorn, told jurors that Manning fired a gun into a tree in the yard, and FBI examiner John Lewoczko concluded that those bullets matched the ones that killed the couple “to the exclusion of every other firearm … in the world.”
Hathorn told jurors Manning didn’t come home for days after the shooting and gave her a leather jacket, which Wise identified as his.
In closing statements, District Attorney Forrest Allgood pointed at the babyfaced Manning. “He doesn’t look like a blood-thirsty monster,” he said. “Monsters never do.”
The jury convicted Manning.
A day later, the defense lawyer begged for his life, saying vengeance belonged to the Lord.
Allgood said Manning deserved execution for murdering these young students. “They were living bright with promises,” he said. “They were bright with dreams of tomorrows that went on forever. Now they are so much rotting flesh.”
If this “slaughter,” he said, “doesn’t justify the death penalty, then we need to apologize to every other individual on death row.”
The jury agreed, and the judge sent Manning to prison to be executed.
Witnesses recant
Over a five-year period, Hathorn had wracked up 88 bad check charges.
At the time of the murders, she faced 33 of those charges and owed $10,000. Worse than that, she faced up to 10 years in prison.
When she mentioned possible time behind bars, she said Sheriff Bryan told her, “You ain’t going to have to worry about that.”
The sheriff picked her up sometimes and bought her Church’s chicken. She said he also bought her furniture and paid some of her bills.
The sheriff wrote out questions for her to ask Manning and recorded all of her conversations with him in person and over the phone. The defense never knew about these recordings in which Manning said he had nothing to do with the murders.
Before testifying, she said the sheriff coached her, and after the conviction, he took her to the bank and gave her $17,500 in reward money. Authorities dropped all but one of her charges.
She told jurors that she saw him on Dec. 9, 1991, but she did not see him again until Dec. 14.
In a 2023 sworn statement, she said she saw him the day of the Dec. 11 killings. They were both at his mother’s house, which didn’t have running water. They had to boil water on the stove and wash in the sink.
“I never saw Willie Manning with any clothes that had blood on them,” she said, “and I never saw him trying to clean blood off him or off any of his clothes.”
As for Jordan, he initially pointed his finger at two suspects in the murders and passed a lie detector test.
Authorities ruled the men out and arrested Manning. A day later, Jordan told the sheriff that Manning had described carrying out the burglary and murders with Jessie Lawrence.
The problem? Lawrence was in an Alabama jail that day.
There was a logistical problem as well. How did four people cram into Miller’s two-seater sports car?
After Manning’s conviction, Jordan received reward money and pleaded guilty to a reduced charge. He admitted he lied in 2012, but he wouldn’t sign anything until 2023 when the sheriff and district attorney were both out of office.
“Manning never told me he killed anyone,” he said in a sworn statement.
He said he lied at the time because he knew he could have been charged as a habitual offender. When the sheriff shared details about the murders, “I changed some words to the way the sheriff said he thought it happened,” Jordan said. “The sheriff was satisfied.”
At trial, jailhouse informant Frank Parker testified that Manning talked to his cellmate about selling a gun, but that cellmate, Henry Richardson, denied that Manning ever spoke to him about a gun. “All we did was play cards,” he said.
In a sworn statement, Parker’s uncle, former law enforcement officer Chester Blanchard, called his nephew a thief and a liar. “I would not take his word for anything,” he said.
In other statements, two men described seeing Manning at the 2500 Club close to midnight on the same night the murders took place. One said Manning asked him for a ride home, which he declined to do.
In another statement, a woman described parking at the apartments besides Miller’s sports car at 1 a.m.
Manning’s lawyers said this narrow timeframe, combined with his lack of a car, made it impossible for him to have carried out the murders more than 3 miles away.
The lone potential link between the burglary of Wise’s car and the murders was the token found at the murder scene.
Manning’s lawyers questioned whether the token came from Wise’s car since he testified his token was “dirty” while the sheriff described it as “a bright shiny gold colored coin.” A photograph of that token mirrors the sheriff’s description.
These tokens were produced for two service station restrooms in Mississippi as well as other restrooms across the U.S.
Hathorn said the sheriff gave her a much different reason for the murders. She said he drove her out to the gravel road where the killings took place and told her, “It was a drug deal gone bad.”
Manning’s lawyers have wondered if the killings might have been carried out by someone she knew. Miller was shot twice in the face at close range, which might suggest a personal killing. Her sports car was double-parked at an apartment complex not far from her trailer, and her missing ring was found between that trailer and her car.
One woman told police that on the night of the murders, she heard a man yelling after midnight from the direction of Miller’s trailer. Defense lawyers obtained statements from two people who said they heard what sounded like a white man yelling, followed by two gunshots.
Dashed hopes
In 2004, Manning learned he was getting a new trial.
It was the first good news he had heard in years. He had two different lawyers appointed to handle his post-conviction relief in Mississippi. They failed to file anything, and the statute of limitations for filing expired in federal court.
After the state Legislature created the Capital Post-Conviction Relief office in 2000, Voisin and Mink both took on the case and filed Manning’s first post-conviction relief request.
That filing led the Mississippi Supreme Court to conclude that prosecutors at Manning’s trial had been guilty of reversible error because they tried to enhance Jordan’s credibility as a witness by asking him if he had volunteered to take a lie detector test.
Justices had recently reversed a criminal case for the exact same reason. Now they reversed Manning’s conviction.
Lawyers for the attorney general’s office asked the high court to reconsider its ruling. They called the evidence against Manning “overwhelming” and suggested that the court adopt the U.S. Supreme Court’s limited retroactive standard.
In 2006, the justices followed the attorney general’s advice, reversed their original decision, took away Manning’s hope for a new trial and sent him back to death row.
Voisin called the ruling baffling. “Prosecutors improperly bolstered his [Jordan’s] credibility,” he said, “and we can’t get a hearing.”
Reprieve with four hours to spare
On the morning of May 7, 2013, Manning prepared to be executed. Tonight would be his final meal when he could dine on steak, shrimp or anything else he fancied. He found it strange that they would feed him so well just before they killed him.
Four hours before the 6 p.m. execution, word came that the Mississippi Supreme Court had issued a stay in an 8-1 vote.
Days earlier, the state had received letters from Justice Department officials, who said the ballistics tests were in “error” and that an FBI examiner had overstated conclusions about hair analysis by saying the hair came from an African American.
After halting the execution, justices reversed their denial of a defense request to reexamine a rape kit, fingernail scrapings, hairs and fingerprint evidence in the case. The rape kit again yielded no DNA.
Authorities identified 33 fingerprints inside Miller’s Toyota MR2. Sixteen belonged to Miller or Steckler, but none of them matched Manning.
In hopes of finding other matches, defense lawyers ran the fingerprints through a database known as the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. None was found.
DNA tests on the rape kit provided no additional clues, either.
After raising money to pay for a lab to test the hair from Miller’s car, the hair fragments proved too small and degraded to obtain a DNA profile.
A specialized lab told defense lawyers that it could do the testing, but Circuit Judge Lee J. Howard IV rejected that request because it had taken longer than three years and because “identifying the mitochondrial DNA of seven hair samples obtained from vacuum sweeping and debris from the car will not call into question [Manning’s] conviction as it is irrelevant to the issue of guilt.”
The Mississippi Supreme Court backed that rejection, saying even if another DNA profile was “discovered from the crime scene evidence, no proof has been shown that it would change the outcome of Manning’s case,” Justice Robert Chamberlin wrote.
After avoiding execution, Manning returned to his death row cell and resumed what he had been doing for decades. Waiting.
He penned a poem:
How many times have I shed tears?
How many people have to die
Before this nation starts to realize
That this system’s all a lie?
Another death penalty, more witnesses recant
In 1996, Manning went on trial for the murders of Jordan and Jimmerson.
Kevin Lucious said that he and his girlfriend, Likeesha Harris, and their baby lived in the same apartment complex as the victims.
Lucious told jurors that he saw Manning push himself into the victims’ apartment and later tell him if he had known “they” only had $12, he would not have done anything to them.
The jury convicted Manning, and he was sentenced to death.
In a 2011 evidentiary hearing, Lucious, who was serving three life sentences in Missouri, recanted his testimony against Manning, saying he was afraid he would be charged with the murders.
The apartment where Lucious testified that he lived with his girlfriend was actually vacant at the time the killings took place. The Starkville police knew this, but concealed the information from both prosecutors and defense lawyers.
The girlfriend, Harris, testified that as soon as she read in the local newspaper about Lucious’ testimony, she knew it wasn’t the truth. “Kevin was trying to get himself off by any means necessary,” she said. “He lied.”
In a 7-2 vote in 2015, the Mississippi Supreme Court granted Manning a new trial because the state withheld critical information.
“Any attorney worth his salt would salivate at impeaching the State’s key witness using evidence obtained by the Starkville Police Department,” Justice Michael K. Randolph wrote.
Manning’s attorneys never got a chance. Prosecutors dismissed his charges before a new trial ever began.
That dismissal marked the sixth exoneration in the same judicial district, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. All the cases came under longtime district attorney, Allgood, featured in Netflix’s documentary series on cases of wrongful convictions, “The Innocence Files.”
“These numerous wrongful convictions stemming from the same judicial district and prosecutor fit a template: flawed and false forensics and-or official misconduct,” Manning’s defense team wrote. “Manning’s current case follows that template.”
All but one of those exonerated were Black.
Sheriff Bryan denied in testimony that race played any role in the investigation, but he acknowledged creating a list of 13 possible suspects in the murder. All of them were Black.
Black Americans are seven times more likely than white Americans to be wrongly convicted of serious crimes in the U.S., according to a report by the National Registry of Exonerations.
Of the 29 Mississippians exonerated since 1989, 83% were Black. In fact, Black Americans convicted of murder are about 80% more likely to be innocent than other Americans convicted of murder.
As for false testimony, evidence shows it can often lead to wrongful convictions. Studies show that nearly two-thirds of wrongful murder convictions since 1989 have resulted from false testimony, and nearly half of wrongful capital convictions have resulted from the false testimony of informants.
“The witness intimidation and false testimony in the Jordan-Jimmerson case was an intended feature, not a ‘flaw,’” lawyers Ayanna Hill and Thomas M. Fortner wrote in a friend of the court brief for the ACLU, the NAACP and the Mississippi Office of State Public Defender. “When law enforcement is willing to frame a man twice for murder, it is almost beyond question that more aspects of Mr. Manning’s trial would fall far short of what he was constitutionally entitled to.”
What is justice?
Manning, now 56, sits on death row. Unless a court intervenes, he will be strapped down and injected with a drug to stop his heart.
The same Mississippi Supreme Court that tossed out his conviction in one case is denying him a new hearing in the other. In a 5-4 decision, the chief justice called the evidence against Manning “overwhelming,” saying even Jordan’s recanted testimony “would not have changed the verdict.”
Manning “has had more than a full measure of justice,” he wrote. “Tiffany Miller and Jon Steckler have not. Their families have not. The citizens of Mississippi have not.”
In his dissenting opinion, Presiding Justice Jim Kitchens wrote, “Today the Court perverts its function as an appeal court and makes factual determinations that belong squarely within the purview of the circuit court judge.”
Without Jordan, the case against Manning is circumstantial, and this is why a circuit judge needs to hold a hearing on the truthfulness and timeliness of the recanted testimony, he wrote.
Mississippi’s attorney general said it’s time for Manning to face justice and called on the high court to set an execution date.
His “fruitless trip to the circuit court for DNA testing brought the litigation of this case to an end,” Fitch wrote. “Manning’s pending motion is a blatant attempt to delay his lawful execution.”
Former District Attorney Allgood agreed. “There are a lot of deserving individuals for the death penalty,” he said. “[Manning is] certainly one of them.”
Former Sheriff Bryan could not be reached for comment.
Manning’s defense team said if the state of Mississippi goes forward with his lethal injection, it will execute an innocent man.
“What measure of justice is served if the wrong man is put to death?” the lawyers asked. “Will Mississippi allow a man to be executed when it has been proven that corruption, coercion, and false forensics lie at the core of his conviction and death sentence?”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
IHL deletes the word ‘diversity’ from its policies
The governing board of Mississippi’s public universities voted Thursday to delete the word “diversity” from several policies, including a requirement that the board evaluate university presidents on campus diversity outcomes.
Though the Legislature has not passed a bill targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in higher education, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees approved the changes “in order to ensure continued compliance with state and federal law,” according to the board book.
The move comes on the heels of the re-election of former President Donald Trump and after several universities in Mississippi have renamed their diversity offices. Earlier this year, the IHL board approved changes to the University of Southern Mississippi’s mission and vision statements that removed the words “diverse” and “inclusiveness.”
In an email, John Sewell, IHL’s communications director, did not respond to several questions about the policy changes but wrote that the board’s goal was to “reinforce our commitment to ensuring students have access to the best education possible, supported by world-class faculty and staff.”
“The end goal is to support all students, and to make sure they graduate fully prepared to enter the workforce, hopefully in Mississippi,” Sewell added.
On Thursday, trustees approved the changes without discussion after a first reading by Harold Pizzetta, the associate commissioner for legal affairs and risk management. But Sewell wrote in an email that the board discussed the policy amendments in open session two months ago during its retreat in Meridian, more than an hour away from the board’s normal meeting location in Jackson.
IHL often uses these retreats, which unlike its regular board meetings aren’t livestreamed and are rarely attended by members of the public outside of the occasional reporter, to discuss potentially controversial policy changes.
Last year, the board had a spirited discussion about a policy change that would have increased its oversight of off-campus programs during its retreat at the White House Hotel in Biloxi. In 2022, during a retreat that also took place in Meridian, trustees discussed changing the board’s tenure policies. At both retreats, a Mississippi Today reporter was the only member of the public to witness the discussions.
The changes to IHL’s diversity policy echo a shift, particularly at colleges and universities in conservative states, from concepts like diversity in favor of “access” and “opportunity.” In higher education, the term “diversity, equity and inclusion” has traditionally referred to a range of efforts to comply with civil rights laws and foster a sense of on-campus belonging among minority populations.
But in recent years, conservative politicians have contended that DEI programs are wasteful spending and racist. A bill to ban state funding for DEI in Mississippi died earlier this year, but at least 10 other states have passed laws seeking to end or restrict such initiatives at state agencies, including publicly funded universities, according to ABC News.
In Mississippi, the word “diversity” first appeared in IHL’s policies in 1998. The diversity statement was adopted in 2005 and amended in 2013.
The board’s vote on Thursday turned the diversity statement, which was deleted in its entirety, into a “statement on higher education access and success” according to the board book.
“One of the strengths of Mississippi is the diversity of its people,” the diversity statement read. “This diversity enriches higher education and contributes to the capacity that our students develop for living in a multicultural and interdependent world.”
Significantly, the diversity statement required the IHL board to evaluate the university presidents and the higher learning commissioner on diversity outcomes.
The statement also included system-wide goals — some of which it is unclear if the board has achieved — to increase the enrollment and graduation rates of minority students, employ more underrepresented faculty, staff and administrators, and increase the use of minority-owned contractors and vendors.
Sewell did not respond to questions about if IHL has met those goals or if the board will continue to evaluate presidents on diversity outcomes.
In the new policy, those requirements were replaced with two paragraphs about the importance of respectful dialogue on campus and access to higher education for all Mississippians.
“We encourage all members of the academic community to engage in respectful, meaningful discourse with the aim of promoting critical thinking in the pursuit of knowledge, a deeper understanding of the human condition, and the development of character,” the new policy reads. “All students should be supported in their educational journey through programming and services designed to have a positive effect on their individual academic performance, retention, and graduation.”
Also excised was a policy that listed common characteristics of universities in Mississippi, including “a commitment to ethnic and gender diversity,” among others. Another policy on institutional scholarships was also edited to remove a clause that required such programs to “promote diversity.”
“IHL is committed to higher education access and success among all populations to assist the state of Mississippi in meeting its enrollment and degree completion goals, as well as building a highly-skilled workforce,” the institutional scholarship policy now reads.
The board also approved a change that requires the universities to review their institutional mission statements on an annual basis.
A policy on “planning principles” will continue to include the word “diverse,” and a policy that states the presidential search advisory committees will “be representative in terms of diversity” was left unchanged.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Closed St. Dominic’s mental health beds to reopen in December under new management
The shuttered St. Dominic’s mental health unit will reopen under the management of a for-profit, Texas-based company next month.
Oceans Behavioral Hospital Jackson, a 77-bed facility, will provide inpatient behavioral health services to adults and seniors and add intensive outpatient treatment services next year.
“Jackson continuously ranks as one of the cities for our company that shows one of the greatest needs in terms of behavioral health,” Oceans Healthcare CEO Stuart Archer told Mississippi Today at a ribbon cutting ceremony at its location on St. Dominic’s campus Thursday. “…There’s been an outcry for high quality care.”
St. Dominic’s 83-bed mental health unit closed suddenly in June 2023, citing “substantial financial challenges.”
Merit Health Central, which operates a 71-bed psychiatric health hospital unit in Jackson, sued Oceans in March, arguing that the new hospital violated the law by using a workaround to avoid a State Health Department requirement that the hospital spend at least 17% of its gross patient revenue on indigent and charity care.
Without a required threshold for this care, Merit Health Central will shoulder the burden of treating more non-paying patients, the hospital in South Jackson argued.
The suit, which also names St. Dominic’s Hospital and the Mississippi Department of Health as defendants, awaits a ruling from Hinds County Chancery Court Judge Tametrice Hodges-Linzey next year.
The complaint does not bar Oceans from moving forward with its plans to reopen, said Archer.
Oceans operates two other mental health facilities in Mississippi and over 30 other locations in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.
“Oceans is very important to the Coast, to Tupelo, and it’s important right here in this building. It’s part of the state of Mississippi’s response to making sure people receive adequate mental health care in Mississippi,” said Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann at the Nov. 21 ribbon cutting.
Some community leaders have been critical of the facility.
“Oceans plans to duplicate existing services available to insured patients while ignoring the underserved and indigent population in need,” wrote Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones in an Oct. 1 letter provided to Mississippi Today by Merit Health.
Massachusetts-based Webster Equity Partners, a private-equity firm with a number of investments in health care, bought Oceans in 2022. St. Dominic’s is owned by Louisiana-based Catholic nonprofit Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System.
Oceans first filed a “certificate of need” application to reopen the St. Dominic’s mental health unit in October 2023.
Mississippi’s certificate of need law requires medical facilities to receive approval from the state before opening a new health care center to demonstrate there is a need for its services.
The Department of Health approved the application under the condition that the hospital spend at least 17% of its patient revenue on free or low-cost medical care for low-income individuals – far more than the two percent it proposed.
Oceans projected in its application that the hospital’s profit would equal $2.6 million in its third year, and it would spend $341,103 on charity care.
Merit Health contested the conditional approval, arguing that because its mental health unit provides 22% charity care, Oceans providing less would have a “significant adverse effect” on Merit by diverting more patients without insurance or unable to pay for care to its beds.
Oceans and St. Dominic’s also opposed the state’s charity care condition, arguing that 17% was an unreasonable figure.
But before a public hearing could be held on the matter, Oceans and St. Dominic’s filed for a “change of ownership,” bypassing the certificate of need process entirely. The state approved the application 11 days later.
Merit Health Central then sued Oceans, St. Dominic and the State Department of Health, seeking to nullify the change of ownership.
“The (change of ownership) filing and DOH approval … are nothing more than an ‘end run’ around CON law,” wrote Merit Health in the complaint.
Oceans, St. Dominic’s and the Mississippi Department of Health have filed motions to dismiss the case.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
How Mississippi’s Supreme Court Runoff Election Could Impact Criminal Cases
Mississippi voters have dealt defeat to one conservative state Supreme Court justice and forced a moderate justice into a Nov. 26 runoff, with the final outcome possibly making the court more open to considering the rights of criminal defendants.
The nine-member court is largely conservative but justices have recently split in high-profile decisions that sharply affected state politics, including a ruling that shut down citizen-led ballot initiatives in Mississippi and allowed some state control over local criminal cases in its majority-Black capital. The court has also rendered rulings that have made the state increasingly unfavorable to defendants appealing their cases.
“The ability of death row inmates in particular, and inmates in general, to access the courts has been recently curtailed significantly,” Matthew Steffey, a professor at Mississippi College School of Law, told The Marshall Project – Jackson and Bolts following the Nov. 5 election.
Justice Dawn H. Beam joined the majority in those decisions, acquiring a reputation of being hostile to appeals by criminal defendants, and she ran for reelection this fall as the Republican Party’s favored candidate. However, she lost in the state’s 2nd District on Nov. 5 to David P. Sullivan, a defense attorney who has worked as a public defender.
Judicial races in Mississippi are nonpartisan and Sullivan has given few explicit signals about his judicial outlook. He has supported at least some criminal justice reforms and would be the third justice with experience as a defense attorney on this court. Some reformers nationwide have pushed for more professional diversity on the bench.
Even if Sullivan turns out to be more centrist or independent than Beam on criminal law, any overall shift in power on the court depends on the outcome of a runoff election next week.
Two-term Justice Jim Kitchens and challenger Jenifer B. Branning will face each other in the Nov. 26 runoff election after neither won more than 50% of the vote on Nov. 5. The runoff will take place across the 22 counties that make up the Supreme Court’s central district, including Hinds County, home to Jackson. Throughout the campaign, the state GOP targeted Kitchens with attacks, while Branning, a Republican state senator with a conservative voting record, is endorsed by the party.
Kitchens is one of two reliably moderate-to-liberal high court justices. Justices from among an additional group of four sometimes veer away from the majority, as well, but can be more unpredictable, and this group does not vote as a bloc.
Quinn Yeargain, a Michigan State University law professor who closely watches state courts, recently analyzed the court’s voting patterns and found Beam was consistently more conservative than Kitchens in recent cases. Yeargain told The Marshall Project – Jackson and Bolts that conservative and liberal voters often have few signals about how to select a candidate in judicial races. “It’s very hard to label the justices,” they said.
Sullivan — whose father was a Mississippi Supreme Court justice from 1984 to 2000 — called himself a “conservative” throughout his campaign. But he has also touted the value of judicial independence and criticized Beam for campaigning on her endorsement by the state Republican Party.
“I think that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way,” Sullivan told the Sun Herald newspaper, speaking of Beam’s use of the endorsement. “Judicial races are nonpartisan for a reason. A judge’s impartiality could be called into question.”
Sullivan has broad legal experience, but much of his career has focused on private criminal defense while also doing some public defense work. He told The Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today that he supported a new administrative rule handed down in 2023 by the state Supreme Court to require continuous legal representation for poor criminal defendants from the beginning of their cases. An investigation by The Marshall Project, ProPublica and the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal last year found, however, that many courts were unready at the time to implement the new representation rules.
During the campaign, Sullivan told The Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today that more work is needed to improve public defense.
Kitchens has also advocated for public defense reforms during his two terms on the court. He told a committee of legislators last year that the “playing field is far from level” between prosecutors and poor defendants.
On other criminal justice issues, he has sometimes dissented from opinions upholding death sentences. His decisions have scrutinized prosecutorial conduct and inadequate legal representation.
Branning, the Republican senator, has a voting record on criminal justice issues that suggests a harsher approach toward criminal defendants. She has supported higher mandatory minimum sentences and reclassifying misdemeanors as felonies, has opposed expansion of parole and was among only a few lawmakers who voted against legalizing medical marijuana.
She also supported increasing the jurisdiction of a controversial, state-run police force inside the majority-Black city of Jackson as well as increasing state control over many felony cases in Jackson. The Supreme Court unanimously curtailed much state power over these felony cases, but a majority left some control intact, with Kitchens and another judge dissenting.
Branning did not respond to questions from The Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today during the Nov. 5 campaign about her possible judicial outlook.
Kitchens was a prosecutor and then in private practice before joining the bench. Branning is a practicing attorney who typically handles civil cases.
The winner of the Nov. 26 runoff will join Sullivan on a court that in recent years has been restricting the ability of people who say the legal system has wronged them to seek relief, legal experts told The Marshall Project – Jackson and Bolts this month.
Krissy Nobile, director of the state’s Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, said it’s become “increasingly more difficult to correct a wrongful conviction.” Her office provides legal counsel for indigent people on death row.
She said a number of recent cases showed the barriers the high court has erected for criminal defendants appealing their convictions, and demonstrated indifference to civil rights violations. Kitchens disagreed with the majority, in full or in part, in all but one of the appeals, which the court unanimously denied.
In a case earlier this year, the Court ruled to monetarily fine an incarcerated person for filing any future post-conviction relief petitions that lacked merit. Kitchens joined a dissenting opinion condemning the fine. In another, the court denied a man who argued that his lawyers were ineffective and that they did not challenge prosecutorial misconduct or false forensic evidence presented by a medical examiner with a checkered past. The court’s majority denied the motion, and in the process, overturned a precedent that allowed ineffective counsel as an adequate reason to give a case another look in some types of appeals. Kitchens dissented, along with two other justices.
“For decades in Mississippi, the Court held that it would correct errors if there was a violation (of) a person’s fundamental rights,” Nobile said. But she added this has changed considerably. Now, if you land a terrible lawyer who rushes your case, “You are out of luck,” she said, “even if your core constitutional rights have been clearly violated.”
For the court’s majority, Nobile added, “The legal technicalities now trump a person’s constitutional rights.”
The runoff is the nation’s final supreme court race of the year. Thirty-two states held elections for their high courts earlier this year, resulting in a muddled picture, with liberals and conservatives each gaining ground in different places, Bolts reports.
Mississippi’s runoff outcome will heavily depend on turnout and the composition of the electorate. In the Supreme Court’s central district, voters split narrowly between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump in the presidential election on Nov. 5, but the runoff is just two days before Thanksgiving and will likely see a large dropoff in turnout. Branning received 42% of the vote in the first round, and Kitchens received 36%, with three other candidates making up the rest.
There will also be a runoff the same day in the Gulf Coast area between Amy Lassiter St. Pé and Jennifer Schloegel for an open seat on the state Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals hears both criminal and civil cases that have been appealed from lower courts. The Mississippi Supreme Court can hear cases directly on appeal or can assign cases to the Court of Appeals.
Observers agreed that against the national legal backdrop, neither a Kitchens victory nor a Branning victory would lead to a seismic change since neither outcome would flip the court’s conservative lean. Still, a modest shift could impact some of the most controversial cases, such as a rare 5-4 decision that upheld the death sentence in Willie Manning’s case.
A Kitchens win, coupled with Sullivan’s upset earlier this month, would deal the Republican Party rare setbacks in a state where it has been dominant and could put moderate forces in a position to grow their numbers further in future elections.
“You might end up with a normal conservative court,” law professor Yeargain said, “instead of one of the most conservative courts in the country.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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