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lethal injection
GOP Killing Spree Continues as Missouri Executes Marcellus Williams
"We must abolish this flawed, racist, inhumane practice once and for all," Congresswoman Cori Bush said of the death penalty.
Sep 24, 2024
Update: The state of Missouri executed Marcellus Williams by lethal injection Monday evening over the objections of his prosecutor and the murder victim's relatives, The Associated Pressreported.
Earlier:
Advocates for a man set to be executed by the state of Missouri on Tuesday lodged desperate pleas for Republican Gov. Mike Parson to change course and grant an eleventh-hour reprieve in a case with such serious red flags that even the office that prosecuted the defendant wants his conviction overturned.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay for Williams, one day after both Parson and the Missouri Supreme Court said they would not halt Williams' killing by lethal injection—a method associated with botched executions—barring a last-minute change of heart by the governor.
"We wish we had better news. But as of now, Marcellus Williams is still scheduled to be executed by Missouri tonight at 6:00 pm Central for a crime he is totally innocent of," the Innocence Project—which works to exonerate wrongfully convicted people—said in a social media post.
Williams, who is Black, was convicted in 2001 of murdering Felicia Gayle, a white woman, during a 1998 robbery. DNA found on the knife used to kill Gayle matched another man. However, Williams was convicted by a nearly all-white jury after St. Louis County prosecutors were permitted to preemptively strike half a dozen Black prospective jurors from service.
Earlier this year, St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell, a Democrat running for Congress, asked to vacate Williams' conviction, citing "clear and convincing evidence" of his innocence including evidence contamination and the revelation that at least one potential juror was excluded because he was Black.
However, the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously ruled against stopping the execution, asserting that Williams' lawyers "failed to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence Williams' actual innocence or constitutional error at the original criminal trial that undermines the confidence in the judgment of the original criminal trial."
Following the ruling, Parson said that Williams "has exhausted due process and every judicial avenue, including over 15 hearings attempting to argue his innocence and overturn his conviction."
Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-Mo.)—a death penalty opponent who was recently defeated by Bell in their district's Democratic House primary—joined civil and human rights defenders in appealing to Parson to reconsider.
"A system that rules that an innocent man can be executed by the hands of the state is anything but just," Bush said on social media. "Gov. Parson must reverse his disgraceful decision not to stop this inhumane execution and act now to save Marcellus Williams' life."
As NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund president and director-counsel Janai Nelson noted:
There is a groundswell of voices calling for either commutation or a temporary reprieve. As you know, these voices include the family of Felicia Gayle... Gayle's family had communicated their "desire that the death penalty not be carried out in this case." Mr. Williams has presented compelling evidence that he is innocent of Ms. Gayle's murder. The perpetrator of this horrific crime left behind significant forensic evidence, including fingerprints, footprints, hair, and trace DNA on the murder weapon. None of this evidence matches Mr. Williams. The St. Louis County prosecuting attorney has recognized that Mr. Williams' capital trial was marred by constitutional errors and the prosecution's presentation of unreliable evidence, which undermine confidence in the judgment against him.
"I implore you to use your gubernatorial authority to grant Mr. Williams clemency, or, at a minimum, grant a reprieve until the underlying conviction can be investigated further and applicable law can be determined," Nelson said.
As Amherst College law professor Austin Sarat noted in Slate Monday, the United States is currently "witnessing the worst execution spree in three decades."
Republican-led states are set to carry out four state-sanctioned killings in addition to last week's lethal injection of Freddie Owens in South Carolina, despite the key prosecution witness' bombshell claim that the convicted man did not commit the murder for which he was put to death.
"This week's execution spree should unsettle all Americans, whether or not they support the death penalty," Sarat wrote. "It will offer further reasons for why capital punishment should be abolished everywhere in this country."
As the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) notes on its website, capital punishment "carries the inherent risk of executing an innocent person."
"Since 1973, at least 200 people who had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S. have been exonerated," the group says, adding that it is "clear that innocent defendants will be convicted and sentenced to death with some regularity as long as the death penalty exists."
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South Carolina AG: Freddie Owens to Be Executed Despite Key Witness' Bombshell Claim
The witness—who claims he falsely identified Owens as the killer because he feared for his life—said that barring a stay, the condemned man "will die for a crime that he did not commit."
Sep 19, 2024
Barring an unlikely 11th-hour reprieve from South Carolina's governor or U.S. Supreme Court, correctional officials are set to carry out the state's first execution in 13 years after its attorney general brushed off a key prosecution witness' bombshell claim that the convicted man did not commit the murder for which he is condemned to die.
Freddie Owens—who legally changed his name to Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah while imprisoned—was convicted and sentenced to die by lethal injection for the shooting death of convenience store cashier Irene Graves, a 41-year-old mother of three, during a 1997 robbery.
Although there was no forensic evidence linking the then-19-year-old man to the murder, state prosecutors relied upon the testimony of co-defendant Steven Golden, who pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Owens as part of a plea deal to spare his own life.
On Wednesday Golden filed an affidavit in the South Carolina Supreme Court in which he declared that he lied about the identity of Graves' killer.
"If this court does not grant a stay, Freddie will die for a crime he did not commit," he wrote.
However, on Thursday the state's highest court rejected Owens' bid.
"Freddie Owens is not the person who shot Irene Graves at the Speedway on November 1, 1997," Golden's filing stated. "Freddie was not present when I robbed the Speedway that day."
"The detectives told me they knew Freddie was with me when I robbed the Speedway," wrote Golden, who was 18 years old at the time of the crime. "They told me I might as well make a statement against Freddie because he already told his side to everyone and they were just trying to get my side of the story."
"I was scared that I would get the death penalty if I didn't make a statement," he continued. "I signed a waiver of rights form and then signed a statement on November 11, 1997."
"In that statement, I substituted Freddie for the person who was really with me in the Speedway that night," Golden claimed. "I did that because I knew that's what the police wanted me to say, and also because I thought the real shooter or his associates might kill me if I named him to the police. I am still afraid of that. But Freddie was actually not there."
Golden—who said he did not name the person who he says killed Graves for fear of his life—added: "I'm coming forward now because I know Freddie's execution date is September 20 and I don't want Freddie to be executed for something he didn't do. This has weighed heavily on my mind and I want to have a clear conscience."
The office of Republican South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson responded to Golden's affidavit on Thursday, calling his claim "inherently suspect" and stating that he "has now made a sworn statement that is contrary to his multiple other sworn statements over 20 years."
The attorney general's statement came after a federal judge on Wednesday declined to halt Owens' execution over his legal team's concerns about the provenance of South Carolina's supply of pentobarbital, which is used in lethal injections.
South Carolina unofficially paused executions in 2011 as lethal injection drugs became increasingly difficult to obtain because pharmaceutical companies enacted bans on their use for capital punishment. The state subsequently passed a law protecting the identity of drug suppliers, resulting in renewed stocks.
Additionally, the state Supreme Court ruled in July that executions by firing squad and electrocution do not violate the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, validating a law signed in 2021 by Republican Gov. Henry McMaster that forces condemned inmates to choose between the two methods of execution at a time when lethal injection drugs were still scarce.
Anti-death penalty campaigners on Wednesday submitted a petition with more than 10,000 signatures asking McMaster to grant Owen clemency.
Although the number of U.S. executions has been steadily decreasing from 85 in 2000 to 24 last year, a flurry of impending state killings has raised alarm among human rights activists. Amnesty International says that in addition to Owens, seven men are scheduled to be put to death in the coming month.
"No government should give itself the power to execute people," Amnesty said Thursday on social media. "It is past time for the U.S. to align with other countries that no longer carry out this cruel and inhuman punishment."
A 2014 study determined that at least 4% of people on U.S. death rows were likely innocent.
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Alabama Executes James Barber Despite Outcry Over Death Penalty Methods
"There's no humane method of execution," said one human rights group.
Jul 21, 2023
The three liberal justices on the U.S. Supreme Court said the right-wing majority was allowing Alabama to use a death row inmate as a "guinea pig" early Friday when the court denied an emergency request to halt James Barber's execution, making him the first person killed by the state since Gov. Kay Ivey suspended capital punishment last year.
Barber, age 64, was pronounced dead just before 2:00 am local time on Friday at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, less than two hours after the Supreme Court denied the stay of execution.
Lawyers for Barber, who was convicted of murdering 75-year-old Dorothy Epps in 2001, argued that the inmate's rights under the Eighth Amendment—which forbids cruel and unusual punishment—would be violated if he was put to death via lethal injection in Alabama, where several executions were botched before Ivey halted the death penalty and ordered a review.
The program was suspended following outcry over the executions of Doyle Lee Hamm, who was punctured with needles for two-and-a-half hours as executioners struggled to access a vein in 2018, and Joe Nathan James Jr., whose execution last year took more than three hours.
Two more executions last year were cancelled in the state after prison officials could not access veins.
The "top-to-bottom" review ordered by Ivey, a Republican, resulted in a change in the personnel who work in the death chamber at Holman and an extension of the time given for killing an inmate—neither of which "constitute[s] serious efforts to fix [Alabama's] pattern of botched execution after botched execution," said lawyers for Barber.
In a dissent authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and signed by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court's liberals said the Eighth Amendment "demands more than the state's word that this time will be different."
"The court should not allow Alabama to test the efficacy of its internal review by using Barber as its 'guinea pig'," wrote Sotomayor, adding that the conservative justices were allowing Ivey's government "to experiment again with human life."
The human rights organization Reprieve said the state "shouldn't be resuming executions, it should be ending them once and for all."
Judge Jill Pryor of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals also accused the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) of using Barber "as its guinea pig" in a dissent on Wednesday as the court handed down a 2-1 ruling allowing the state to execute the man.
Pryor noted that Ivey's review was "conducted entirely internally, entirely outside the scope of any court's or the public's scrutiny, and without saying what went wrong or what it fixed as a result."
"Three botched executions in a row are three too many," Pryor wrote. "Each time, ADOC has insisted that the courts should trust it to get it right, only to fail again."
"Mr. Barber has raised a serious and substantial Eighth Amendment claim that the pattern will continue to repeat itself," Pryor added.
The ACLU of Alabama pointed out that Barber was sentenced to death by a non-unanimous jury, a practice permitted only in Alabama and Florida.
"That alone should be reason to question his death sentence," said the group.
Barber was the 15th person executed in the U.S. this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
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