Willie Jerome "Fly" Manning (born June 12, 1968) is on death row at Mississippi State Penitentiary, USA, with two death sentences for a conviction of double murder (Steckler-Miller murders). He was previously also convicted and sentenced to death for an unrelated double murder (Jimmerson-Jordan murders), but the State Supreme Court overturned this verdict and ordered a new trial. The charges against him for the Jimmerson-Jordan murders were then dropped, and the Death Penalty Information Center listed him as a 2015 death row exoneree for this case.
Steckler-Miller murders: background and trial
Jon Steckler, 19, and Tiffany Miller, 22, two students at Mississippi State University in Starkville, were, according to prosecutors, forced into Miller's car from the street in front of Steckler's fraternity house on December 11, 1992. About an hour later, a motorist found Steckler shot in the back of the head and left for dead by the side of a road just outside Starkville, having been run over by Miller's car, a Toyota MR2. When law enforcement officers arrived, they found Miller's body in nearby woods. She had been shot twice, in the forehead and mouth. The evidence suggested that she had been sexually assaulted. Steckler died shortly thereafter. In the morning, Miller's car was found near the MSU campus.
Jon Stephen Steckler was a sophomore majoring in forest resources. He was an athlete who played high school football for Cathedral High School and a practicing Catholic who served on the mission field in Mexico. He was also an outdoorsman and hunter. Pamela Tiffany Miller was a third-year sophomore (having taken a year off) from Madison, Mississippi, studying nursing.
On the morning of the murders, one of Steckler's fraternity brothers, John Wise, found his car had been burglarized. Prosecutors said the two students had interrupted the burglary. One of the items stolen was a gas station token. A very similar token was found at the scene of the killings. Also stolen was a black leather bomber jacket that was later recovered from Manning's girlfriend who testified at trial that Manning had given it to her; and a portable CD player, which was traced by its serial number from Wise to a pawn shop in Jackson. The person who pawned it, Gaylon Hall, testified that he obtained it from Manning.
Prosecutors said that Manning had a record of convictions for theft and other crimes and had recently been paroled: he was convicted on September 5, 1991, for grand larceny and on April 20, 1992, for burglary of a dwelling. The trial of Manning included testimony that he possessed and also tried to sell items stolen from the Wise burglary. Manning's girlfriend, who testified to Manning's possession of the stolen property, also testified that Manning had been using a tree for target practice. According to an F.B.I. firearms expert, slugs recovered from the tree were fired from the same gun used to kill Steckler and Miller. Ginger Wallace testified that she saw Manning wearing a leather jacket and possessing a gold class ring and a watch similar to Steckler's.
In his defense, Manning said that he did not commit the murders and that he was at a club on the night of the murders. He argued that Jesse James "One-Wing" Lawrence had committed the murders, but Lawrence was in jail in Alabama at the time. One witness, Manning's cousin, changed his story several times: he had earlier implicated two other men but then stated that Manning had confessed to committing the murders with another man.
Manning stated that the property he was selling was stolen by someone he did not know.
Manning was convicted of the murders of Steckler and Miller after a jury trial; the jury deliberated for one hour. Manning was sentenced to death on November 8, 1994, after the jury decided Manning's crime was "heinous, atrocious, and cruel."
Steckler-Miller murders: 2013 argument for new DNA testing, stay of execution, and subsequent developments Manning claimed that he should have DNA testing using technology that was not available at the time of his trial. He pointed out that multiple fingerprints found in Miller's car matched neither him nor the two victims.
Manning said that at his trial, the prosecutor, Forrest Allgood, illegally dismissed as potential jurors African Americans who read African American magazines because these were liberal publications.