Mississippi Supreme Court grants stay of execution for Willie Jerome Manning

The Mississippi Supreme Court voted 8-1 on Tuesday to delay the execution of a man convicted of murdering two college students in 1992.

Willie Jerome Manning was scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. CT, but the court decided to put the execution on hold while it considered the case, according to The Associated Press.

Manning's lawyer had provided the court with letters from the FBI explaining that there had been incorrect testimony about hair and ballistics tests in the case.

Justice Michael Randolph, who was the only vote against the stay of execution, expressed anger with the Justice Department because Miranda warnings had been provided to suspects in the Boston bombing case and because of stonewalling in the so-called Fast and Furious scandal, in which Republican lawmakers accused federal officials of losing track of weapons that may have fallen into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

"Although the connectivity and expediency by which this review was accomplished is mind boggling, I should not be surprised, given that the families of victims of the clandestine ‘Fast and Furious’ gun running operation can’t get the Department of Justice to identify the decision makers (whose actions resulted in the death of a border agent and many others) after years in inquiry, and that this is the same Department of Justice that grants and enforces Miranda warnings to foreign enemy combatants," Randolph wrote in his dissent on Tuesday.