After Contaminating His Evidence, They’re Leaving Him With Days Until Execution

blurry image of a television screen behind a mesh fence
Zain Murdock
September 13, 2024

Marcellus Williams was born on December 30, 1968. And on September 24, 2024, Williams is scheduled to die. For decades, he’s maintained that he didn’t commit murder in 1998. He hoped DNA evidence on the murder weapon would prove it. But Missouri prosecutors demolished that opportunity.

For months ahead of Williams’ trial, the assistant prosecuting attorney handled the weapon, a butcher knife, without gloves, deeming it “worthless” as evidence. So, while 2016 DNA testing excluded Williams from having handled the knife, present DNA couldn’t exclude prosecutors - making the DNA of whoever killed with the knife irretrievable.

Supported by the murder victim’s husband, Williams hopes for an exoneration-inclusive plea deal. But Missouri’s Attorney General advocated against it, feeding into a longstanding system rooted in finding Black people inherently violent and criminal. A circuit judge refused to throw out the conviction. Only the governor or a higher court like the Supreme Court can intervene.

While over 2,000 people await execution, Black defendants are disproportionately placed on death row and executed, even sometimes after the procedure goes horribly wrong. About half of homicide victims are Black, but in 75% of executions, the victims are white.

Williams has spent 24 years supporting and remembering others on death row - mainly through poetry, his “lifeline.” It’s time for him to receive the comfort and advocacy he’s offered others. Read his words here: https://pushblack.news/uu8. Join the fight to stop his execution here: https://pushblack.news/ik0.

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