Missouri executes Marcellus Williams despite prosecutors’ push to overturn conviction

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/24/missouri-executes-marcellus-williams

30 Comments

  1. WhyCantIStopReddit on

    >But no forensic evidence linked Williams to the murder weapon or crime scene, and as local prosecutors have renounced his conviction, the victim’s family and several trial jurors also said they opposed his execution.

    This is so unbelievably fucked up.

  2. Even the prosecutors office came out in defense of Williams. That is extremely out of the norm unless there was an egregious error. Everyone involved with the situation (aside from Governor Parson and the Supreme Court) was on Williams’ after new evidence arose proving his innocence. This is a symptom of a bigger problem with our justice system.

    Edit: I misspoke. I said “broken” justice system. The system is not broken, it is working exactly as intended. We need systemic change.

  3. It’s important in these moments to really sit with the ramifications.

    The state isn’t just an external thing. It is a proxy. The state kills on behalf of the people. That’s the entire framework that underpins the system.

    We killed him. Many of us didn’t want to. Many of us tried to plea on his behalf. Many of us voted against the people who ended up doing this.

    But it’s still us. It is still the system that ostensibly represents us murdering someone on our behalf.

    Which is why it’s so important that we make the system better. We owe a moral debt for this.

  4. I remember hearing phrases like “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” and really thought Serious People generally agreed with it. This is gross and heartbreaking.

  5. Fuck EVERYONE involved in not allowing this appeal to be heard.

    Every single one of them is accessory to state funded murder of an innocent.

  6. The same people that are pro-life are the same people that support killing brown people. That is the United States….The land of freedom….

  7. This is why the death penalty should be illegal. The government, under no circumstances should be putting its citizens to death for any reason.

  8. energizernutter on

    This is the third one recently. It makes me think Conservatives in power like killing innocent people

  9. Call it as it is. Mike Parson is a murderer. Faced with overwhelming evidence of a man’s innocence, and pressure from nearly everyone involved to free the man, Parson willfully disbanded the panel looking into the conviction in favor of putting a likely innocent man to death. This is state sponsored murder. This is a complete and total miscarriage of justice.

  10. Calm-Interview5968 on

    Republicans are the party of murder.

    I’m not religious, but I hope there’s a heaven and hell so I can watch those motherfuckers burn.

  11. Yeah… Strange that people are “pro-life” when it comes to abortion, but no so much when it’s about the death penalty.

  12. This legit makes me want to throw up.

    Just imagine. You know you didn’t do anything. And you just have to sit. And wait, and watch everyone argue about whether to kill you or not. And watch the day inch closer. The heart hammering when you hear that people are fighting on your behalf. Then the depression hearing that it isn’t happening fast enough. The day of. The preparations. The final meal. And you hoping that, you know what, it’s 2024, this shit can’t happen anymore, we’re not that country anymore, someone will stop this before they do it.

    Right? This actually CAN’T ACTUALLY happen, right?

    Right?

    Guys?

    And then your last walk. Knowing you’ve done nothing wrong. Just sitting, waiting for justice to step up. And knowing you’re going to die.

    For nothing.

  13. This is your reminder that the governor of Missouri gave a pardon to Andy Reid’s son who had a DUI and which had a child in a coma for 11 days.

  14. The-Curiosity-Rover on

    Governor Mike Parson can go to hell. He murdered a man today just so he could appear “tough on crime”.