A man was lynched on Tuesday

My Missouri killed Marcellus Williams

There was so much wrong with the Marcellus Williams murder conviction that the prosecutor and the victim’s family fought against his execution.

But at 6 p.m. central time on Tuesday, Williams died by lethal injection at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Mo., after Missouri’s Gov. Mike Parson denied him clemency, judges on the Missouri State Supreme Court refused to issue a stay of execution, and then judges on the Supreme Court turned their backs on him, as well.

(The SCOTUS vote was 6-3; the three progressive associate justices voted to delay the execution. Trump’s conservative judges voted for murder.)

There were enough questions about Williams’ conviction that the scandal-laden Missouri governor who served before Parson took time off from his shenanigans to appoint a board to study Williams’ case.

That board was disbanded by Parson.

Interestingly, Parson was quick to pardon Patty and Mark McCloskey, two St. Louis attorneys who in 2020 aimed guns at protestors walking through their neighborhood, but perhaps you can see what led to his decisions from the photos below.

Say hello to Ma and Pa McCloskey

This is Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams, 55 at the time of his state-sanctioned murder

Williams was convicted of the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. From the Innocence Project:

The prosecutor’s office that convicted and sentenced him to death has now admitted they were wrong and zealously fought to undo the conviction and save Mr. Williams’ life. More than one million concerned citizens and faith leaders implored Governor Parson to commute Marcellus’s death sentence.

Williams’ lawyers and the prosecuting attorney’s office filed a joint brief on Saturday that asked the execution be stayed, and that the case be returned to a lower court. The state had used two unreliable witnesses whose stories conflicted with one another. No forensic evidence at the scene of the murder pointed to Williams. So long as he was still considered guilty, the victim’s family preferred life in prison to an execution.

But Missouri killed him, anyway. This, as his attorney said prior to Williams’ execution, was not justice. It was base and ugly and racist and wrong. May the shame of this act reach the hearts of the people responsible, up and down the line. He was the third Missouri inmate who’s been put to death this year. He is the 100th since the state returned to capital punishment in 1989.

We hold the Gayle and the Williams families in our hearts.

But Missouri. Goddamn.