Convicted double murderer Willie Jerome Manning, who has been on death row for nearly two decades, is set to be executed Tuesday, after being denied a DNA test that could save him from the execution chamber, the New York Times reports.
In a 5-to-4 decision in April, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that there was "conclusive, overwhelming evidence of guilty" and that DNA tests would not "preclude his participation in the crimes," according to the Times.
But in a dissenting opinion Justice James W. Kitchens argued that "whatever potential harm the denial seeks to avert is surely outweighed by the benefits of ensuring justice by the scientific analysis of all the trace evidence."
Dov Fox of the Georgetown University Law Center says that "no physical evidence has ever linked Manning to the crime," in a Huffpost blog.
The 44-year-old Black man was convicted in the 1992 kidnapping and murder of Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller, two White college students.
