the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jul 22, 2024
Marcellus Williams is scheduled to be executed by the state of Missouri on September 24 for a murder he didn’t commit. He has already spent 25 years on death row.
In August of 1998, Felicia Gayle, a former newspaper reporter, was killed when she was stabbed 43 times with a butcher knife from her own kitchen. There was plenty of evidence left at the scene, including footprints in Gayle’s blood, fingerprints, hair samples, and DNA evidence on the murder weapon. None of the evidence matched Marcellus Williams.
At trial, there were no eyewitnesses to the murder. The prosecution based its case on the testimony of two police informants. Both claimed that Williams confessed to them, but each of their stories changed over time and were inconsistent with the evidence in the case. The family of one of the witnesses, Henry Cole, later told investigators he made up the story to get the reward money put up by Gayle’s family.
Williams’ execution was set for August 27, 2017, and he was actually fed his expected last meal before the governor at the time, Eric Greitens, stayed his execution. Though Greitens called for a board inquiry to look at the case, including the DNA evidence, years went by with no action taken.
The governor who replaced Greitens, Mike Parson, terminated the board of inquiry. Though lawyers from the Midwest Innocence Project sued to stop the breakup of the board of inquiry, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld it, and his execution date was set.
Unfortunately, Williams is not alone in being railroaded in this way. A study by the Center on Wrongful Convictions found that testimony from jailhouse informants accounted for 49.5% of wrongful convictions nationally since 1971.
It also didn’t help Williams that he’s black and the female victim was white. In St. Louis County, history shows that a black defendant in a case in which a murder victim is white is 3.5 times more likely to receive the death penalty than a white defendant.
Workers have an interest in opposing the death penalty imposed by courts that provide different “justice” to those with money versus those without.
The Innocence Project is asking supporters to sign a petition to stop the execution at https://innocenceproject.org/petitions/stop-the-execution-of-marcellus-williams-an-innocent-man/.