Opinion: The Death Of Marcellus Williams Proves Justice In America Is A Myth

In an attempt to reach at-risk youth in Washington, D.C., the metropolitan police department created a go-go band. It was an extension of the wildly popular Officer Friendly initiative in which officers come to schools or youth centers and play the sounds of the city. They were called the Side by Side band and surprisingly, they weren’t bad.
I remember coming home after their performance and telling my dad about what I’d witnessed and how they even had a conga player, which has always been one of the most popular positions in a go-go band. I noted that the members of the band even hung around to talk to us.
I will never forget my father’s laugh at the whole story. He couldn’t believe that the police department had a go-go band or that they were playing in schools or that they were even remotely talented enough to perform listenable music.
I will also never forget what he said after he was done chuckling: “Let’s see how nice the cops in the Side by Side band are once you get pulled over for speeding.”

I just knew Marcellus Williams wasn’t going to die.
Knowing that politicians are nothing if not theatrical, I assumed that in the 11th hour with just minutes to go they were going to stay the execution of Williams shortly after the tension had reached its crescendo.
Since 1998, Williams had maintained his innocence in the killing of Felicia Gayle, a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who was found brutally murdered inside her home in a St. Louis suburb.
Williams was convicted in 2001, his execution halted twice.
“First, in 2015, the Missouri Supreme Court halted execution plans and appointed a special master to review DNA testing on the handle of the murder weapon, the butcher knife that was used to stab Gayle 43 times and was left lodged in her neck,” CBS News reported.
And then again in August 2017, when then-Gov. Eric Greitens stopped the proceedings just hours before Williams was set to be executed. Greitens created a “panel of five retired judges to investigate the DNA evidence.” For six years, the panel combed through the findings until current Gov. Michael Parson put an end to their work.
Parson didn’t just stop the panel ― because the work was incomplete the judges were never able to issue a final report. But Parson didn’t just revoke the board, he started the clock back up on Williams’ execution. See, the execution had been halted while the panel was at work, but as soon as that stopped, so did Williams’ chances at survival.
“This Board was established nearly six years ago, and it is time to move forward,” Parson said last year, according to CNN. “We could stall and delay for another six years, deferring justice, leaving a victim’s family in limbo, and solving nothing. This administration won’t do that.”
But things kept changing in the case. Testimony was recanted or found to be untrue. DNA evidence was inconclusive. And two witnesses might’ve just made up their stories for the reward money.
“There is no physical or forensic evidence linking Williams to the crime scene,” MSNBC reported. “Fingerprints taken at the crime scene were inexplicably destroyed. Neither bloodied footprints nor hair at the crime scene could be linked to Williams. The evidence against him is the testimony of two eyewitnesses — a jailhouse informant and Williams’ former girlfriend. His attorneys argue that both implicated Williams because they wanted to claim a $10,000 reward.”
And none of that moved the needle for those who wanted Williams dead. I’m glad that Parson mentioned Gayle’s family and the justice they weren’t receiving as long as Williams was alive.
Because here is the rub: They didn’t want Williams to die. Neither did the prosecutor who argued the case, or some members of the jurors that found him guilty. All of them banded together to try and stop the execution, and none were successful in saving his life.
But a decision was made that didn’t need DNA results, or testimony, or evidence, or a petition signed by some 900,000 people who didn’t want Williams to die. And all of it was ignored. The Missouri Supreme Court and Parson both made the decision to proceed with killing Williams. Even the highest court in the land voted along party lines to continue with Williams’ execution.
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And I would love to call it a miscarriage of justice, but truthfully, the American justice system is working just as it’s designed: the police department in tandem with the prosecutors, the judges being lock step with the elected officials. All of it was systematically designed to do exactly what it did. Parson has presided over 11 executions and has never granted clemency. But you know who he did pardon? The white couple who pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters.
What I didn’t realize years ago standing in the kitchen of a house I would never see again, is that it takes time to cultivate the level of disdain and cynicism that my father had for the police and this country and those who run it. He wasn’t trying to diminish my enthusiasm for the Side by Side band, he was trying to lessen the blow that he knew was coming once I got older: that the police, no matter how much they emulate familiar sounds, are not familiar people. They aren’t your friends. It’s a weird position to be both Black and a parent and try to make sense of the nonsensical, while trying not to diminish the joys of childhood and simultaneously wrestling with the terrors of reality.
This feels like the beginning of my villain era.
I feel stupid and ashamed of what we are becoming.
But the one feeling I can’t shake is the shame and embarrassment for even thinking that the truth would be enough to save a man’s life.