Willie Manning

The story of Willie Manning, who remains in the Mississippi death row cell where he has been for more than four thousand days.

On December 11th, Willie Manning begins his fifteenth year facing execution in Mississippi. It is a platitude to suggest that as the Christmas season approaches we should consider those less fortunate than ourselves, but Willie would certainly qualify among those we might remember.

The prosecutor in his case managed to get juries to vote for no less than four death sentences on Willie, in two separate trials, just in case executing him once did not do the job. He was convicted of two double homicides, each allegedly committed as part of separate robberies.

For a decade, Willie sat in his cell on death row. At first he busily studied law, eagerly reading any decision that might save him. He insisted on his innocence of the crimes, and the newly-discovered evidence supported his claim, but no court wanted to listen. Gradually, depression weighed him down, and he retreated into his cell and into himself.

Then, finally, in 2004, the Supreme Court of Mississippi ordered review of both verdicts against him. Crucial evidence that had been suppressed, pointing to his innocence. The ‘eyewitness’ in one case, who had sworn how he watched from his home across the street as Willie enter the victims’ house, had clearly lied: there was a report showing that this witness’ supposed home had been boarded up, and he was living across town at the time. It also emerged that in Willie’s second trial, a man who had identified him as the killer in that case (in exchange for favourable treatment by the prosecution,) had previously fingered two other men for the very same crime.

The day that the Supreme Court overturned the convictions was the happiest day in Willie’s life. “It was the end of a nightmare. Actually, I cried,” he told me recently. He had been given his life back; the enormous weight of the death penalty lifted off him.

With evidence of his innocence coming to light, Willie’s former partner wrote to him, allowing him back into his daughter’s life; he had been cut off from her since his conviction, when she had been an infant. “While I read the letter, I was looking at my daughter’s photo, and I was feeling truly blessed. This time, I bawled my eyes out.”

The prosecution asked the Mississippi Supreme Court to reconsider its decision granting Willie relief. This is usually a formality, but it can take many months. As he waited, Willie slowly tried to piece his life back together from his death row cell. He wrote constantly to his now-15 year old daughter. He sent her the little money he had saved up, so she could take her friends to the skating rink for her birthday. By the time he got out of prison, he would be forty, but he would still have a future.

Then, on March 9th, 2006, Willie received a large envelope in the mail from the Supreme Court. “I read just the first page. I didn’t have to go further,” he said. “I bent down like I had been kicked in the stomach.”

‘The original opinion is withdrawn and this opinion is substituted therefor … the petition for post-conviction relief is denied’. From unanimously ordering relief, the Court had swung to the polar opposite – voting 6-0 to put him back on death row. There was no apparent reason for their change of mind, no dissent from any judge.

A judge sits on his leather chair in his office, ruminating on an opinion. Many miles away, a prisoner waits to hear the verdict on his life. To lose is despair; but nothing compares to the cruelty of victory torn away.

Soon afterwards, Willie was on the phone with his daughter wondering how to tell her. Now he had once more been declared to be ‘guilty’, he would be cut off from her once again.

Meanwhile the prosecutor who put Willie on Death Row had always believed that Willie was simply evil. The significance of June 6th, 2006, passed me by. Not so the prosecutor. It was the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year: 6-6-6, the devil’s number. The prosecutor chose that day for a news programme on a local Mississippi television station. It was a tabloid vilification of Willie Manning – the thrust of which was that he was effectively Beelzebub, one of Satan’s senior lieutenants . Because the programme had been loudly advertised the day before Willie got to watch himself being pilloried on television from his death row cell.

Today, Willie remains in his Mississippi death row cell. “I’ve been here more than four thousand days,” he told me. “I don’t want to think of anything, even myself. I don’t want to conversate. I don’t want to cry. I just want to lie on my bed.”

This article also appeared in the New Statesman.