The death penalty is an incurably flawed punishment. The September 24, 2024, execution of Imam Marcellus “Khalifa” Williams, a Black American, by the State of Missouri illustrates just how flawed the punishment is.
Williams was convicted and sentenced to death for the August 11, 1998, killing of Felicia Gayle, a former White female social worker and reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a St. Louis suburb. He maintained his innocence from the moment of his arrest to his final breath.
What was the evidence against Williams?
There was no direct evidence against Williams. This, even though the police collected an abundance of physical evidence at the crime scene: the murder weapon (a kitchen knife), bloody shoeprints and fingerprints, and hairs on the victim’s t-shirt, her hands, and the floor that did not belong to her or her husband. Law enforcement believed these prints belonged to the killer, but Williams was explicitly excluded from the bloody shoe and fingerprint evidence, as well as the foreign hair evidence.
Further, in the years following Williams’ conviction, three independent DNA experts excluded him from the DNA evidence subsequently discovered on the kitchen knife used to murder Gayle—evidence that also had been contaminated by the White St. County Prosecuting Attorney, Keith Larner, who had repeatedly handled the knife without wearing protective gloves.
The State based its entire case on two unreliable witnesses: a jailhouse snitch who testified that Williams confessed to him and Williams’ former girlfriend, who said she saw a laptop and purse belonging to the victim in Williams’ possession (although police never recovered the evidence). Both witnesses were potentially motivated by the large reward being offered in the case.
By excluding several qualified Black prospective jurors, Prosecuting Attorney Larner secured a jury of 11 Whites and one Black. It was a jury primed to convict and recommend a death sentence:
Prosecuting Attorney Larner was part of a prosecutorial system in St. Louis County with a history of professional misconduct before current Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell was elected in 2018, promising reforms and integrity in prosecuting the accused. Bell immediately expanded the prosecuting attorney office’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) to review and examine past cases, especially those involving the death penalty, that may have involved prosecutorial misconduct or possible innocence of the defendant.
One of the first cases Bell’s CIU encountered was the Marcellus Williams case. The CIU’s exhaustive review found that in 2015, Williams filed a writ of habeas corpus in the Supreme Court of Missouri seeking to have DNA evidence found on the handle of the kitchen knife lodged in Gayle’s throat tested. The court appointed a special master to supervise the DNA testing process, but after the testing was completed, the special master sent their findings back to the court without conducting a hearing on the test findings. Then, the state’s high court summarily denied Williams’ habeas application.
An August 22, 2017, date was set for Williams’ execution; however, based on the newly discovered DNA evidence, former Missouri’s former Gov. Eric Greitens stayed the execution just hours before it was to be carried out and appointed a Board of Inquiry (five retired judges) to investigate Williams’ claims of innocence.
However, the 2018 election that brought Bell into the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office also brought arch-conservative Republican Mike Parsons into the
Governor’s Office and extreme MAGA Republican Andrew Bailey into the state Attorney General’s Office. Both officials would pave the way for Marcellus Williams dark journey into the death house.
Before it could reach a final determination, Parsons dissolved the five-member Board of Inquiry appointed by Gov. Greitens in June 2023.
Both Williams and Bell knew that Parsons wanted Williams in the death chamber.
In January 2024, Bell tried to head off the building political effort to kill Williams by filing a 63-page motion to vacate Williams’ conviction and death sentence. Bell listed five reasons why the motion should be granted:
As a groundswell of support for Williams’ claim of innocence developed and as the motion to vacate sat idle in the trial court, the Missouri Supreme Court on June 4, 2024, set Williams’ execution date for September 24, 2024, as it unanimously rejected the constitutional challenge to Pardons’ decision to dissolve the Greitens’ Board of Inquiry.
Based on the new information about the newly-discovered discovered DNA evidence (namely, that prosecuting attorney Larner’s contaminated the DNA/knife evidence), Bell offered, and Williams accepted, an “Alford plea deal“—
Williams’ death sentence would be vacated, and he would plead guilty to a life sentence without parole with the right to pursue his actual innocence claims. Circuit Judge Bruce Hinton approved that agreement the day before an August 22, 2024, hearing Hinton had scheduled to hear Bell’s motion to vacate.
Attorney General Bailey was furious at the Alford plea deal. He rushed to the Missouri Supreme Court, demanding that the court block it. Within a matter of hours, the state’s highest court, in a unanimous decision, stepped in and blocked the plea deal, leaving Williams’ September 24 execution date in place. The Court, however, did allow the hearing on Bell’s motion to vacate to proceed.
At the close of the August 22 hearing, Bell conceded there had been a constitutional mishandling of the evidence by his office and that there was “clear and convincing evidence” that Williams’ conviction was riddled with constitutional errors and should be vacated.
But on September 12, 2024, Judge Hinton refused to overturn Williams’ conviction, concluding that Williams was guilty and that the death sentence should be carried out. The Missouri Supreme Court upheld Judge Hinton’s decision on September 23. Bell and Williams’ attorneys sought a last desperate attempt to have the U.S. Supreme Court intervene and block the execution. They told the nation’s highest court that:
“Mr. Williams’ conviction and death sentence were secured through a trial riddled with constitutional errors, racism, and bad faith, much of which only came to light recently. This Court should stay his execution to review these issues, which go to systemic problems bigger than even Mr. Williams’ case.”
In a 6-3 vote, cast along ideological lines, the Supreme Court just hours before the execution time allowed the execution to proceed.
Therein lies the incurable flaws in the death penalty.
Racism and political ideology led to Williams arrest, prosecution, conviction, sentence, and ultimate execution. He was prosecuted by a White Republican prosecutor, convicted by 11-1 White jury, sentenced to death by a White judge, had the Board of Inquiry dissolved by a White Republican governor, had a White Republican Attorney General oppose the Alford plea deal, had a predominantly White Republican Missouri Supreme Court block the plea deal, and had a 6-3 Republican U.S. Supreme Court allow his execution to go forward.
While the legal maneuvering was underway to convict and execute Williams, he spent 24 years on death row, converted to Islam, became an imam for his prison, and spent time guiding his fellow inmates and writing poetry. There was no compelling reason to hasten his execution while hearings were had on his claims of actual innocence.
Williams’ attorney from the Midwest Innocence Project, praised Williams’ “evocative poetry” and “service to his family and his community”, saying he had been a “kind and thoughtful man, who spent his last years supporting those around him in his role as imam.”
“While he yearned to return home, he … worked hard to move beyond the anger, frustration, and fear of wrongful execution, channeling his energy into his faith and finding meaning and connection through Islam. The world will be a worse place without him,” she said.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson said that Missouri had “lynched another innocent Black man“. Missouri congresswoman Cori Bush added, “We have a moral imperative to abolish this racist and inhumane practice.”
These factors alone clearly and indisputably show that the death penalty is an incurably flawed punishment motivated and maintained by a racist and conservative political ideology. It is far past time that America joins the rest of the modern world in abolishing this inhumane and arbitrary act of violence.
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