Lawyers for Willie Manning asked the Mississippi Supreme Court on Friday to reopen his post-conviction claims, arguing recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions on racial discrimination in jury selection allow relief, the filing says.
The filing cites the U.S. Supreme Court’s May 28 reversal of Terry Pitchford’s capital murder conviction and its 2019 decision in Curtis Flowers’ case. The Pitchford majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote, found a trial judge had “erroneously omitted” part of the Batson inquiry that bars peremptory strikes based on race, the ruling says.
Manning’s lawyers say the same errors infected his 1994 capital murder trial for the 1992 killings of two Mississippi State University students, Tiffany Miller and Jon Steckler. The filing says 28 of 85 potential jurors were Black but only two served after then-District Attorney Forrest Allgood used seven of 11 strikes against Black prospective jurors, and defense counsel objected at trial.
The filing details reasons Allgood offered at trial to excuse Black jurors — including jewelry, neighborhood, television habits, views on capital punishment, reading Jet and Ebony, unemployment and family criminal history — and argues those reasons were inconsistent with the record or applied to white jurors who were seated. The filing also notes Mississippi Today published an investigation eight days earlier that it says uncovered new evidence suggesting Manning’s innocence.
The new motion adds to Manning’s existing petition before the Mississippi Supreme Court. His lawyers sought a rehearing in September after the court in a 5-4 decision upheld his sentence, and court observers have said such rehearings are usually resolved within 60 days. The attorney general’s office has previously said Manning’s Batson claim is barred by prior rulings; Manning’s lawyers called that position unreasonable. The state had not yet responded to the most recent motion. In a 2023 brief, Attorney General Lynn Fitch urged justices to schedule the execution, writing that Manning’s filings were a “blatant attempt to delay his lawful execution,” and a brief filed on Manning’s behalf by the Innocence Project, the ACLU and the NAACP said jury selection in his trial was “replete with blatant racially motivated strikes.”
Jon Ross Myers is the executive editor and publisher of the Mississippi News Network, Mississippi's largest digital only media company. He can be reached at editor@tippahnews.com
