QUOTE ONE OF THE DAY: “The dissolution of the board of inquiry before a report or recommendation could be issued means that, to date, no judge has ruled on the full evidence of Mr. William’s innocence,” said Tricia Rojo Bushnell, executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, which represents Mr. Williams. “Knowing that, the state of Missouri still seeks to execute him. That is not justice.”
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QUOTE TWO OF THE DAY: “The board of inquiry statute was created so that an independent group of retired judges had an opportunity to review all the evidence in a death penalty case, without any procedural or political obstructions, to make sure an innocent man or woman is not executed. It’s a unique, fail-safe protection. By aborting the process before this distinguished group of jurists issued a report, Gov. Parson violated Mr. Williams’ due process rights under the state and federal constitutions to life and liberty,” said Barry C. Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project.
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QUOTE THREE OF THE DAY: “There is clear and convincing evidence that Marcellus Williams did not murder Ms. Gayle. It would be a terrible tragedy for the state to execute Mr. Williams before the board of inquiry completed its commission to make a report and recommendation to the governor as to whether or not Mr. Williams should be executed,” said Charles Weiss, a partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, which represents Mr. Williams.
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POST: "Marcellus Williams, Facing Execution Despite DNA Evidence of His Innocence, Sues Missouri Governor and Attorney General for Dissolving Board of Inquiry Examining the Case and Moving to Set an Execution Date," published by The Death Penalty Information Centre, on August 24, 2023.
GIST: "Jefferson City, MO) Marcellus Williams, who faces execution in Missouri despite DNA evidence proving his innocence, has filed a civil lawsuit against Gov. Mike Parson for dissolving the board of inquiry that had been investigating his innocence claim before it could produce a report and recommendation, and against Attorney General Andrew Bailey for moving to set an execution date after the governor had illegally dissolved the board.
The suit, filed in Missouri’s 19th Circuit Court, asks the court to invalidate Gov. Parson’s June 30 executive order dissolving the board and lifting Mr. Williams’ stay of execution, arguing that the governor violated Mr. Williams’ rights and the law when he dissolved the board without a report and recommendation.
In an unprecedented move earlier this summer, Gov. Parson rescinded an executive order issued by his predecessor, effectively lifting Mr. Williams’ stay of execution and terminating a board of five former judges appointed by previous Gov. Eric Greitens to examine the new DNA evidence — which no court has ever reviewed.
Gov. Greitens issued the executive order pursuant to Missouri Revised Statutes section 552.070, a law passed in 1963 designed to protect innocent people from being wrongfully executed.
The statute permits the governor to empanel a board of inquiry to review evidence of innocence in a death penalty case, an action taken only three times by Missouri governors since its passage.
Gov. Greitens’ 2017 executive order required the board to provide him with a report and recommendation about Mr. Williams’ claims of innocence and application for clemency.
The lawsuit alleges that Gov. Parsons never received such a report or recommendation from the board before he dissolved it.
“The dissolution of the board of inquiry before a report or recommendation could be issued means that, to date, no judge has ruled on the full evidence of Mr. William’s innocence,” said Tricia Rojo Bushnell, executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, which represents Mr. Williams. “Knowing that, the state of Missouri still seeks to execute him. That is not justice.”
“The board of inquiry statute was created so that an independent group of retired judges had an opportunity to review all the evidence in a death penalty case, without any procedural or political obstructions, to make sure an innocent man or woman is not executed. It’s a unique, fail-safe protection. By aborting the process before this distinguished group of jurists issued a report, Gov. Parson violated Mr. Williams’ due process rights under the state and federal constitutions to life and liberty,” said Barry C. Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project.
Mr. Williams has spent 24 years of his life on death row for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle, a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who was stabbed 43 times in her home.
Although no physical evidence or crime scene evidence connected him to the crime, his conviction primarily relied upon the testimonies of two incentivized witnesses, whose statements were inconsistent with the crime scene evidence, with their own prior statements, and with each other.
In 2016, post-conviction DNA testing conducted on the handle of the knife lodged in Ms. Gayle’s neck detected the presence of male DNA and definitively excluded Mr. Williams as the source.
That evidence has been reviewed and analyzed by three renowned DNA experts, all of whom concluded that Mr. Williams is not the source of the DNA.
Furthermore, Mr. Williams was excluded as the source of the hairs found near Ms. Gayle’s body and as the source of bloody footprints found inside the house near the body.
Based on this new DNA evidence, Gov. Greitens stayed Mr. Williams’ execution in 2017, and formed the board of inquiry to examine it.
When Gov. Parson dissolved the board without receiving its report and recommendation about Mr. Williams’ case, he violated the statute, defied the executive order, exceeded his authority, and undermined Mr. Williams’ rights.
“There is clear and convincing evidence that Marcellus Williams did not murder Ms. Gayle. It would be a terrible tragedy for the state to execute Mr. Williams before the board of inquiry completed its commission to make a report and recommendation to the governor as to whether or not Mr. Williams should be executed,” said Charles Weiss, a partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, which represents Mr. Williams.
Mr. Williams is represented in this filing by Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (Charles Weiss), the Midwest Innocence Project (Tricia Rojo Bushnell, Rachel Wester, Blair Johnson, Leigh Ann Carroll); and the Innocence Project (Adnan Sultan, Barry Scheck, Tim Gumkowski, Hannah Freedman, and Cecily Burge)."
The entire story can be read at:
https://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/2023/08/marcellus-williams-facing-execution.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
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