Cotton v. State

BARNES, J.,

for the Court:

¶ 1. In 1995, Fannie Lee Burks was murdered in her apartment in Tunica County, Mississippi. At that time, the murder was deemed unsolved, and the case “went cold.” However, in 2008, the Tunica County Sheriffs Office tested biological evidence that was found under Burks’s fingernails at the time of her murder. The evidence had been stored in the property room. The DNA profile found under the fingernails of her right hand was consistent with that of Joe Cotton. In 2011, Cotton was charged with Burks’s murder. After a jury trial in the Tunica County Circuit Court in…