In December 2019, 26-year-old Cameron Lamb backed his pickup truck into his garage. Within nine seconds, Kansas City police detective Eric DeValkenaere shot and killed him. In September 2024, millions mobilized against Marcellus Khaliifah Williams’ execution. The state of Missouri killed him anyway. Months later, Williams and Lamb’s stories converged.
DeValkenaere received a historic conviction in 2021, and faced six years in prison. But before leaving office, Mike Parson—the same governor and former sheriff who refused to save Williams—commuted DeValkenaere’s sentence.
Lamb’s family denounced this decision on King Day. “The law clearly spoke,” believes Lamb’s stepfather. “[I]f you wanna be the governor for the people, then let the law work for everybody.”
Parson didn’t let Williams die by mistake. The law has murdered us before. For decades, authorities participated in, enabled, and ignored the violence of lynch mobs. They made choices and boasted about them. Appealing to Parson’s sense of morality didn’t push him to free Williams. He didn’t want to. He didn’t value Williams’ “innocent” life, or Lamb’s, or his family’s. Parson valued DeValkenaere’s, even though the system already found him guilty.
To authorities like Parson and DeValkenaere, innocence and guilt mean only and exactly what they want them to mean. They used the criminal legal system as their playing field, hungry for Black death -- and the system made it easy.