Judge Howard Manning Jr

Judge Howard Manning Jr. was home eating fish for supper night when his doorbell rang unexpectedly. There stood three uninvited lawyers for condemned murderer Willie Ervin Fisher, desperate to get Judge Manning to stop the execution 7 hours away. After 3 meetings with them and state lawyers at his house over the next 4 hours, Manning temporarily halted the execution. Manning's stay order didn't last long. The state Supreme Court met later that night and overruled him, and Fisher was put to death Friday. But it was the 3rd time in 3 scheduled executions over the past 2 months that defense lawyers persuaded a local trial judge to stop an execution years in the making. Death penalty opponents cite it as evidence of growing public consensus that the death penalty is flawed.