Marcellus Williams is dead. He has been executed by a state of the United States, (Missouri) and likely for no offense more grievous than that of having been a convenient scapegoat.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/24/marcellus-williams-execution-missouri-faq/
Three DNA experts have concluded that the DNA on the murder weapon was not Marcellus'. There is no battle-of-the-experts here. No DNA expert disagrees with this. The evidence was contaminated. The DNA was that of a investigator and an assistant prosecuting attorney who handled the murder weapon, a knife, improperly.
Williams' death was an injustice that the former Governor, Eric Greitens, seems to have been interested in correcting. Greitens in 2017 convened a board to review the evidence, including material that jurors had never heard at trial.
Unfortunately, for justice and for Williams, Greiten resigned from office in the midst of a charges that he had sexually assaulted a former hairdresser. That brought Mike Parson into office.
Parson has insisted on Williams' death with the intensity of an Inspector Javert. And he has now obtained that end.
How did things end for Javert?
At any rate, William's execution was the first in a spree of official killings. It was followed in short order by the executions of Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, 46, AKA Freddie Owens (South Carolina), Emmanuel Little John (Oklahoma), Alan Miller (Alabama) and Travis Mullis (Texas). It was a coincidence that all five complicated legal journeys ended in the accused' deaths within a single week. The temporal bundling was a coincidence. But it is a fitting one for our moment.
Many innocent people have been executed over the years, but I am aware of no prior case in which the killers (including the governor of Missouri and the six Republic politicians on the Supreme Court) executed a person unashamedly, knowing that the person was innocent. Although I don't know this for a fact, I believe that the rationale of the six Republican politicians (I won't call them "justices" because they long ago abandoned that role) for murdering Marcellus Williams was that a defendant who is convicted after a fair trial (never mind that Williams did not receive a fair trial) has received the due process to which he is entitled under the Constitution, and is not entitled to have subsequently discovered evidence considered. The problem with this rationale is that the Constitution does not define "due process," and there is no reason that the justices can't define it to prohibit the execution or imprisonment of any person known to be innocent. Although I oppose the death penalty in all situations, if anyone deserves it, it is the governor of Missouri and the six Republican politicians on the Court.
ReplyDeleteI can't prove this, but I believe that Trump's coarsening of the Republican Party played a role in the murder of Williams. Just as Republicans can now express racism without dog whistles and can lie about matters of which everyone knows the truth (such as that Haitian immigrants are eating pets), so can they execute innocent people without apology.
I have some hope for Glossip, although I couldn't defend that hope in analytical terms.
DeleteThe reason that there is more hope for Glossip is that he was denied a fair trial, because prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence, which the Supreme Court has held to violate due process. Of course, we know how much the six Republican politicians on the Court respect precedent, but we nevertheless have reason to be hopeful in Glossip's case.
ReplyDelete