CNN Opinion: Young and Out in Mississippi

CNN is featuring this short clip, which highlights the voices of several young LGBT Mississippians:

Mississippi Supreme Court Issues Stay of Execution for Willie Manning

With only hours to left before his scheduled 6 p.m. execution today, the Mississippi State Supreme Court voted 8-1 to issue a reprieve for Willie Manning. His execution will be delayed while new DNA testing of previously untested evidence is examined. Justice Michael Randolph dissented.

The Innocence Project released a statement shortly after:

"Hopefully, Manning, who has spent 20 years on death row maintaining his innocence in the deaths of Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller, will now have the opportunity to do DNA testing that could prove his innocence. This past week, the FBI notified the state that there were flaws in both the hair and ballistics evidence that was used to convict Manning."

Today, Mississippi Could Put an Innocent Man to Death, Despite New Evidence

In mere hours from now – at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 7, 2013 – Willie Manning will be put to death for his role in the 1992 murders of two white MSU students, John Steckler and Tiffany Miller. At the time, forensic evidence matching hairs at the scene, a jailhouse "whistleblower"'s testimony, and the testimony of Manning's former girlfriend all seemed to seal the deal; Manning was clearly guilty. And so, to Death Row he went, with constant attempts for a new trial dismissed.

Willie Manning (Source: MS. Dept. of Corrections)

But doubt surrounds the case even now, as new evidence, technological advancements, the recanting of one witness, and the collapse of the credibility of another threatens our understanding of what happened on that December night in 1992.

Manning's case, it turns out, is part of a broad review of the FBI's handling of thousands of cases in the 80s and the 90s. The Justice Department sought to correct errors in forensic hair analysis done during cases at the time. The DOJ believes that there may have been many cases where the so-called hair "matches" were erroneous. Since there was no evidence directly linking Manning to the crime scene (and since fingerprints found in the car of one of the victims were not his), the "African American hair" that was found inside the car was of utmost importance in convicting him.

In April, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against allowing Manning's lawyers to reexamine a rape kit, fingernail scrapings, hair, and fingerprint evidence in the case; DNA testing was never done to see if they could link Manning to the killings, or if they could possibly point elsewhere. The Mississippi Supreme Court's argument was that that, even if Manning's DNA wasn't present, it wouldn't overturn his conviction.

It is true that there is plenty of circumstantial evidence against Manning. There is plenty of testimony, too.

A Flimsy Case

Earl Jordan, a jailhouse informant, testified that Manning had admitted to him that he killed the two white victims. The Prosecutor, Forrest Allgood, even sought to boost Jordan's credibility by announcing that Jordan had offered to take a lie detector test. What Allgood failed to disclose, at the time however, was that Jordan had already passed a previous lie detector test while claiming to have seen a separate suspect with the victims. 

Today, however, Jordan says that Manning "never said he killed them" and that, at the time, he thought he would receive "consideration" from the prosecutors for incriminating Manning.

There was also Paula Hathorn, who provided circumstantial evidence indicating that Manning may have been in possession of, and tried to sell, items stolen from the victims like Steckler's watch and class ring, just days after the killings. She also pointed to a tree where she said Manning had used for a target practice; the type of bullets were said to match those used in the killings. But Hathorn, it turns out, seriously misrepresented herself under oath. She claimed she received no favors for her incriminating testimony. But it was revealed later on that she was given, in exchange, a favorable plea deal on previous fraud charges in addition to an $18,000 reward in money for testifying. None of that was disclosed to jurors at the time.

Another witness, Manning's cousin, also testified that Manning had confessed to the killings. But he offered several versions of this story. In the first telling, the cousin claimed that Manning had committed the crimes accompanied by two other men. In the re-telling, the cousin said Manning had confessed to committing the crimes with only a second man.

If Allgood was happy to have the cousin's testimony, he certainly wasn't interested in pursuing a possible second or third suspect in the killings; once Manning was the target, there was never any interest shown in apprehending anyone else – not even an accomplice.

But there's also the fact that Manning was convicted of another double homicide, in the killing of two elderly women in their apartment in Starkville, Miss., in 1993. But even in that case, evidence was circumstantial, and Manning could not be directly linked to the crime. A bloody shoe print at the scene has never been connected to any suspect; the size of the bloody print was an 8, but Manning wears a size 11 1/2. It may seem even more incriminating to consider that Manning has been convicted of two double homicides, but remember, Forrest Allgood was the prosecutor in that case, too.

And from the beginning, Allgood had settled on Manning as the purveyor of the crimes.

Years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court case Batson v. Kentucky ruled that any sort of racial discrimination in jury selection violated the Equal Protection Clause. But when Allgood was selecting jurors for the Manning trial, he ensured an all-white jury, striking down jurors simply because they read "black magazines" like Jet. But even black perspective jurors who gave similar answers to white perspective jurors were given peremptory strikes by the prosecutor, who clearly sought to ensure that there would be no one on the Manning trial jury who looked like him.

If Forrest Allgood's reputation told a better story, we might be able to forgive a few oddities here or there. But Allgood has a history.

A Tale of Two Innocents 

In 2008, the Mississippi Innocence Project was able to help procure the release of two men who had been wrongly accused of very similar murders and sentenced to death.

One of those men was Levon Brooks, a black man, who was convicted in 1992 of the rape and murder of his ex-wife's child. Courtney Smith was taken from her home and her body was later found in a pond. With the assistance of "bite expert" Dr. Michael West, a dentist from Hattiesburg, the prosecution was able to prove that Smith bore the bite marks of Levon Brooks, and Brooks was convicted for her rape and murder.

Then, in 1995, Kennedy Brewer, another black man, was convicted of a nearly identical crime that took place 18 months after the murder of Courtney Smith. Brewer's girlfriend's three-year-old daughter, Christine Jackson, was kidnapped, raped, and murdered. 

Courtney Smith, the victim of a vicious 1990 murder. (Source: Screenshot / NPR)

Once again, the prosecutor brought in the same medical examiner who had performed the autopsy on Smith's body. Hayne, collaborating once again with the dentist West, found bite marks on the little girl's body. This time, West concluded that the bite marks were made by the teeth of none other than Kennedy Brewer.

And so Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, in the span of just a few years, were convicted of identical crimes on the basis of Hayne and West's "forensic" examination. At this point, it's worth noting that, thanks to a system West had helped set up, Hayne was netting over $1 million a year at the time time, working for prosecutors across the state, performing six-times the number of autopsy "examinations" per year that a single examiner should.

But Hayne and West had such a strong working relationship with the lead prosecutor for the Brewer and Brooks cases – with District Attorney Forrest Allgood – that it didn't matter if their work might be less than in-depth.

In 2001, while Brewer was on death row, new DNA testing proved that the semen in the little girl's body was not his, meaning that he couldn't have been the one to rape her, making it highly unlikely that he was the one who killed her. Brewer's conviction was vacated and he was taken off death row, but Allgood signaled an intent to retry him for the murder and seek the death penalty yet again.

So for five years, Brewer sat in a county jail while Allgood twiddled his thumbs.

detector test; failed to disclose that Earl had previously passed such a test when claiming to have seen another suspect with one of the victims. 

Then, the Innocence Project changed everything when, in 2007, it sought to represent Brewer in a new trial. Soon, the Innocence Project was aware of the strikingly similar sister case, the Brooks case. And through new examination, it was revealed that the "bite marks" on the girls' bodies weren't bite marks at all – at least, certainly not bite marks that could be traced back to any single man. They were marks consistent with two bodies that had been dragged, scraped, and left in the water with fish, turtles, and insects. Suddenly, the biggest part of the evidence used in trial against the two men was defunct.

With the help of the Attorney General's investigative team, the Innocence Project found evidence that pointed instead to 51-year-old Justin Albert Johnson. At the time of both of the murders, he had lived near the house of the victim. He was a predator with a history of attacking women and young girls. And he had been a suspect in both cases, but was ignored each time when Allgood decided to singularly pursue other men – Brooks and Brewer. Finally, DNA testing on evidence from the Brewer case matched Johnson's DNA profile, and in 2008, investigators from the Attorney General's office moved to arrest Johnson. Johnson then confessed to having been a lone actor in both murders.

Soon, with over thirty years of prison time between them, both Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer were set free from crimes they knew they had never, and would have never, committed. They were absolved of those heinous crimes.

And Allgood's response to all of this? "At least nobody died," he said. Well, no. Even if you ignore the fact that two innocent men had decades of their lives taken, a second little girl died who would've never been killed if prosecutors had gone after the right man the first time. If Justin Albert Johnson had been arrested and tried for the 1990 murder of Courtney Smith, he never would've had the chance to murder Christine Jackson years later. But because Allgood (a name dripping with such Rowling-esque irony that it shouldn't even be real) had locked in on a "bad guy" and staked his claim on Levon Brooks, a known sexual predator who lived right in the neighborhood was never seriously considered as a suspect.

But hey, "At least nobody died." Nobody, Mr. Allgood, except Christine Jackson.

Christine Jackson, who was a victim of a vicious murder in the early 1990s. (Source: Screenshot / NPR)

But Allgood's blood lust wasn't yet sated. With Brooks and Brewer still alive, he wanted to seek the death penalty, now, for the third man to be prosecuted for the murders. But when the families of the victims sent him letters asking him not to seek the death penalty for Johnson, he relented:

"My personal opinion is that anybody that rapes and kills a small child deserves the death penalty," Allgood said. "...Quite frankly, I would have preferred to have tried him and sought the death penalty."

Yes, Mr. Allgood, we know you would've. We know that you would love to fry anyone, guilty or not guilty, and if you make a mistake or two along the way, well, "Oops!" --At least nobody died, except, of course, the little girl who did die and the two men who had decades of their lives stripped from them.

Manning's Last Hope

Ultimately, the Willie Manning case does seem to have a lot more circumstantial evidence that points to his guilt. The evidence against Manning is certainly more compelling than it ever was against Brooks or Brewer. But even so, if there's even a chance that he's innocent, aren't we obligated to run those DNA tests? Aren't we obligated to reexamine those "Native American hairs" that were used in the trial against him to see if Allgood's "hair" evidence" is of any more forensic worth than his "bite mark" evidence? And, if there's any truth behind claims by Manning's cousin that there was someone else involved in the crime, shouldn't we be testing that evidence to ensure that, if anyone else was involved, they also see justice?

This isn't just about Willie Manning. This is about how we do justice in this country. This is about the thousands of others who could be wrongly imprisoned or put to death just because we didn't want to be thorough. What do we have to lose? If Manning is guilty, the evidence will show it. If someone else is guilty, then there's a strong possibility that, somewhere, another killer is running free. Are we really willing to send this man to his death amid all these doubts?

The only salvation for Willie Manning now is if Gov. Phil Bryant orders a stay of execution so that the testing – offered by the FBI – can be completed. As of Monday, Bryant was reviewing the case, but had yet to make a decision.

In a new post, the ACLU called on Bryant to make the decision to allow the testing to go forward – and to keep Manning alive until its results come forward:

"In the face of the evidence of innocence discovered since the trial, the Supreme Court of Mississippi failed to uphold its duty to serve justice. The Court decided that it would not stop Manning's execution to allow new DNA testing. Now, only a decision by Governor Bryant is likely to permit this crticial testing. Executions are not the place to act first and ask questions later. These grave questions of innocence should be answered before it is too late."

Whether or not Bryant will act remains to be seen. But with mere hours left, we'll know Manning's fate – and perhaps, in some part, the fate of our justice system – very soon. It's Allgood, you say? Hardly.

The following is an NPR report on the Brewer and Brooks cases:

Palazzo: Gays Have Bullied the Boy Scouts "Worse Than Any Group Has Ever Been Bullied Before"

U.S. Congressman Steven Palazzo (R-MS) appeared on a Family Research Council webchat to speak out against attempts to remove the Boy Scouts of America's ban on gay scouts. Palazzo accused gays of "bullying" the Scouts and working to "corrupt" the organization. (Source: Screenshot / RightWingWatch)

With the possibility that the Boy Scouts of America might finally discard its ban on gay scouts, anti-gay groups like the Family Research Council are fighting back. The Family Research Council, which is a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) designated hate group, held a "Stand With Scouts Sunday" web chat, where participants called the repeal of the ban a "sign of the end times" and warned it will cause America to "self-destruct."

Among the participants were Texas Gov. Rick Perry as well as U.S. Congressman Steven Palazzo from Mississippi's 4th District. Palazzo, who has fought for anti-gay policies in the past, expressed that he felt the Boy Scouts were victims of "bullying" worse than "any group or organization had ever been bullied." See for yourself:

"I'm not leaving any stone unturned on what I can do personally to protect the Boys Scouts from this popular culture, this liberal agenda that is being crammed down their throat. I feel like, in a large sense, that the Boys Scouts are being bullied, worse than any group or organization has ever been bullied before. They've been intimidated... They're being harassed, and at the end of the day they're also being ridiculed by some in the liberal media." 

"If America cannot support the Boys Scouts of America, and telling them to stand strong, then what do we stand for as a country? And it's not just to defeat the policy that they're proposing, but also to remove the agitators that are trying to corrupt the Boys Scouts of America and bend to the popular culture."

Notice that Palazzo could not bring himself to say the word "gay" or even the colder "homosexual." The topic is so unsavory to him that he opted instead to allude to... them with "liberal agenda," "pop culture," and "agitators" (It's not an anomaly – he does this all the time when referring to gay people). So uncomfortable with gay people, Palazzo is, that he could not even bring himself to recognize them as people with lives, emotions, dreams, and yes, hearts. For him, gay people must remain a distant collectivized threat, a symbol of evil and, yes, corruption. Because if we admitted that gay people were actually people and not some scary cabal from the underworld, well, that might undermine our efforts to deny them the same God-given rights to justice, equal treatment, and basic human dignity that we recognize real people as deserving.

Because if gay people really are "people," then maybe we would also have to admit that they've endured far worse bullying than the organization that actively discriminates against gay kids will ever know. While the BSA tells gay kids that they are not worthy of joining unless they deny who they are, all anyone is asking the BSA is that they stop discriminating against gay kids, and that they stop crushing their hopes, their dreams, and denying them equal human dignity that every kid deserves.

There are bullies here, for sure. But it's not coming from the unmentionables. It's coming from cowards like Rep. Palazzo who don't have enough moral fiber to stand up for the weak and the outcast. Shame on you, Steven Palazzo.

See the shameful video of the cowardly Congressman below, courtesy of RightWingWatch. After the jump:

Photo Essay: The War Over Mississippi's Last Abortion Clinic

 

This photo essay is the result of several months of photo documentation at Mississippi's last abortion clinic, the Jackson Women's Health Organization in Jackson. My goal in producing this essay was to tell the story of the daily conflict that takes place between the sidewalk, the parking lot, and the front door of the clinic. Women who arrive for health services are often met by loud yells, preaching, and singing from pro-life protestors who stalk the sidewalks, waiting for the chance to dissuade patients as soon as they arrive. Police cars, videographers and photojournalists (like me) are a common sight outside the clinic. While a fence alongside the front of the clinic helps women avoid some of the protesting, clinic escorts are also readily available to help navigate women from the parking lot to the clinic entrance.

I began this endeavor in January 2013, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion nationwide. From January through April, a flurry of activity surrounded the clinic. There was the "40 Days for Life" event held by protestors nationwide during the Lent season, during which pro-life activists vowed to keep protestors at clinics nationwide every day (not a problem for the protestors in Jackson). Then, of course, there was the question over whether or not Gov. Phil Bryant's TRAP (Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers) law would result in the clinic being shut down as early as April (a court ruling in April provided that it the clinic would not be forced to cease operation so long as a legal challenge to Bryant's law was underway).

Because this is a debate that really should've ended long ago – on January 22, 1973 to be exact – I decided to shoot the essay using the same medium that was used at that time: black and white film. The photos were shot using a Canon SLR loaded with Kodak film. Because, really, I shouldn't even have the opportunity to shoot protests like the ones seen here – not in the digital age.

University of Southern Mississippi to Play Major Role in Boston Response

Screenshot from the Boston Globe footage as the first bomb went off at the Boston Marathon.

April 15, 2013 / Credit: Boston Globe

The University of Southern Mississippi may not seem like an obvious place for counter terrorism operations, but in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, one on-campus institute is gearing up to play a major role in the response. The National Center for Spectator Sports and Security, known as NCS4, is a Department of Homeland Security linked institution that operates out of the Trent Lott Center on the Southern Miss campus in Hattiesburg.

It is the only institution in the country that focuses primarily on fighting against terrorist activity at sporting events through research and training initiatives.

Calling Southern Miss "a leader in the the area of sports safety," NCS4 Director Lou Marciano expressed response plans when I spoke to him last night:

“The University of Southern Mississippi will be a facilitator of the best information that facilitates the best practices and training,” he said. “Our role is to digest this issue, work with the field, work with those that manage these events and first responders, and gather all we’ve learned from this tragedy so that in the future people can feel free to go to events like this and feel safe.”

In 2010, I wrote a piece for the USM student newspaper, the Student Printz, that examined the institutions inside the Trent Lott Center in response to complaints that the building was a just a "$28 million paper weight" that housed no significant activities. At the time, of course, few people on campus knew what NCS4 was. While the rest of us were busy focusing on threats to airports and transportation, NCS4 was already highly concerned about the potential for terrorist attacks at sporting events. From the 2010 article:

"We cannot see any case except sports games where there are so many people in one place at the same time," said Young Lee, a visiting professor [and security expert] from Daebul University in South Korea. "So that's why terrorists are very interested in sporting events, because our airports are very secure right now."

Stacey Hall, the associate director for NCS4, wanted to make it clear that NCS4 looks at more than just international terrorism. "When people think terrorism, they think 9/11; they think international terrorism. But domestic terrorism is also a problem.

"For example, you have the bombing by Eric Rudolph in the ‘96 Olympic games, you have Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombings, and even in 2006, at the University of Oklahoma, a student with a bomb strapped to his body prematurely detonated a bomb outside the stadium. Fortunately, nobody was injured, but he died. Those kinds of things are our concerns."

 I didn't realize how prescient the concerns expressed in that article would be when I wrote it in 2010, but others at NCS4 did.

Obviously, Marciano said, NCS4 hadn't managed to prevent the Boston bombings. That's partly because, while NCS4 was concerned about open air attacks, their main focus had been on stadiums and sports arenas, where such an explosion could feasibly kill hundreds if not thousands. But when the fourth annual National Sports Safety and Security Conference is held in July this summer, NCS4 will come with renewed discussion about sports safety, with a heavy emphasis on preventing attacks like the one yesterday in Boston.

For Now, Mississippi's Last Abortion Clinic Will Stay Open

Diane Derzis, the owner of the Jackson Women's Health Organization in Jackson, MS, places a pro-choice  placard outside the clinic.
January 22, 2013 / Photo by Ashton Pittman.

Mississippi's last abortion clinic, the Jackson Women's Health Organization (JWHO), will remain open – at least for now – after a federal judge in Mississippi issued a temporary restraining order Monday blocking enforcement of Governor Phil Bryant's anti-abortion regulations.

The law signed by Bryant would've required clinic doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital in order to perform abortions. Here's the catch: In order to get admitting privileges, doctors must live in state. The doctors at JWHO come in from out of state to perform abortions. Practically, that would've meant it would be impossible for JWHO to continue providing abortion services.

In January, Bryant admitted that the law was intended to shut the clinic down:

“My goal of course is to shut it down,” Bryant told a group of pastors in video captured by WJTV on Thursday. 

Last April, Brayant told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins that Democrats had tried to kill the abortion clinic bill because “their one mission in life is to abort children, is to kill children in the womb.”

TRAP laws like this one, or "Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers,"are intentionally designed to make it difficult for clinics like JWHO to continue operating.

The judge's ruling Monday means that the law will not be enforced – at least until a future decision. Clinic supporters had feared that the clinic could be forced to cease offering services to patients as soon as this week.

"I was teary eyed when I heard the news," Laurie Roberts, a clinic escort who helps patients avoid harassment protestors as they enter the clinic, wrote on her Facebook. "If you had seen the worry on the faces of women today who thought that maybe Thursday there would be no clinic – or even tomorrow – they wouldn't be able to get their procedures, you would know why."

It's only a temporary reprieve, but at least for the moment, supporters and patients of the Jackson Women's Health Organization can breathe a sigh of relief.