JACKSON – David Jackson Williams, convicted in the 2005 death of fellow Ole Miss student Demetria Bracey, will get a new hearing before the Mississippi Supreme Court.

That news came today during the court's weekly announcement of decisions.

His request for a hearing, called a petition for a writ of certiorari, was granted 6-3.

Voting for the hearing were Chief Justice William Waller Jr. and justices Jess Dickinson, Ann Lamar, Jim Kitchens and Bubba Pierce. Voting against it were James Graves, Michael Randolph and David Chandler.

Last December, the state Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction, then Williams' attorney, David Hill of Oxford, appealed to the Supreme Court.

Hill asked the court to reconsider Williams' conviction, saying his original trial attorney was not allowed to offer the alternate idea to the jury that Bracey killed herself in a suicide pact he could not go through with.

The evidence, Hill contended, supports the contention that the jury should have been allowed to consider a lesser offense of assisted suicide.

Williams is serving a life sentence in the state penitentiary.

Hill also contended that the jury should have been shown Bracey's priest's statement to police about her death.

More on this story in Friday's NEMS Daily Journal newspaper.