The Mississippi Supreme Court has ordered a new trial for death row inmate Willie Manning after it found the state withheld evidence that would have been favorable to Manning's defense. Manning, 46, has been on death row since he was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for killing 90-year-old Emmoline Jimmerson and her daughter, 60-year-old Alberta Jordan, during a robbery attempt. The women were found bludgeoned to death, their throats slit, at a Starkville, Mississippi apartment complex in 1993...
His appeal centered around the withholding of a series of index cards with notes from the crime scene investigation. Starkville Police investigators canvassed the apartment complex where the women were killed and recorded the results of those interviews on the cards. According to Manning's defense attorneys, information on the cards shows that the apartment from which the state's key witness claims to have seen Manning enter the victims' home was actually vacant at the time.