Okay- re-reading through the story and noticing the meruem vs Zoro thing brought this to my attention-
When Cracker appeared infront of Luffy and Nami, he had no Haoshoku haki, yet it's noted that his ability to strike fear in the Homies was so great that the homies instantly withered away and died
Other words for "wither" are
atrophy, decay, deflate,
deteriorate, disintegrate, dry, fade, languish,
perish, shrink, shrivel, wane, wilt, blast, blight, collapse, constrict, contract, desiccate,
die.
Or when addressing it to a person: "In addition to shrinking, the verb wither can also refer to
losing vitality and fading away."
By wiki standards Death Manip is: In its most straightforward applications, this ability allows the user to instantly kill others by manipulating factors associated with death to make them die. The method varies, however; some users may
halt vital biological processes or
attack the soul directly. Others affect their target on a more abstract level,
simply causing them to die for no discernible reason.
Unless there are other instances of Homies instantly dying from a CoC-like effect (that isn't Brook's soul manip), then Cracker should get limited death manip via fear inducement.