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Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence of innocence

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Re: Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence of innocence

#221

Post by kelthuzad »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #211
kelthuzad wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I didn't misunderstand or misrepresent anything. Your argument, and The Innocence Project's, seems to be that a lack of physical evidence tying the accused to the crime scene constitutes reasonable doubt. I disagree, and so did the jury. Wrong. The point isn't that the mere absence of physical evidence tying the accused to the crime scene inherently constitutes reasonable doubt. Rather, the argument is that the pres…

> Rather, the argument is that the presence of substantial forensic evidence at the crime scene that explicitly does not match the accused introduces significant reasonable doubt. Right, and this argument is just obviously wrong. The existence of forensic evidence which doesn't match the accused just proves that people other than the accused were in the victim's house at some point. It doesn't in any way contradict t…

When substantial forensic evidence such as fingerprints, DNA, or hair found at a crime scene does not match the accused, it does more than suggest the presence of others, it significantly undermines the hypothesis that the accused was involved in the crime, especially when such evidence is likely to have been left during the commission of the crime.

In Marcellus Williams' case, the absence of his DNA or fingerprints amidst a wealth of forensic evidence collected directly from the crime scene (including the murder weapon) is essential. This isn't just incidental evidence but it's directly tied to the crime itself. The presence of another person's forensic markers on the murder weapon and at key points of interaction within the crime scene (like entry points or near the victim) strongly suggests involvement of someone other than the accused.

>It would be a different story if there were something like a bloody fingerprint, or other forensic evidence which could be presumed to come from only the real perpetrator. But there wasn't.

The claim that there was no forensic evidence like a bloody fingerprint which could be presumed to come only from the real perpetrator in Marcellus Williams' case is not accurate. According to reports, the crime scene did include bloody fingerprints and footprints, among other forensic evidence. However, none of this evidence matched Marcellus Williams.[0]

In criminal law, the burden of proof lies with the prosecution to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused committed the crime. When significant forensic evidence contradicts the involvement of the accused, it introduces reasonable doubt and not merely about their level of involvement but about their presence at the scene altogether.

[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/09/23/missou... - "Among the evidence police collected: bloody shoeprints and fingerprints, a knife sheath and the suspect's hair collected from Gayle's shirt, hands and the floor. Missing from the house were Gayle's purse and jacket, and her husband's laptop."

Re: Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence of innocence

#222

Post by ImJamal »

alistairSH wrote: post #180
ImJamal wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That’s not the way our justice system is supposed to work. We don’t require proof of innocence. We require (or are supposed to require) proof beyond a reasonable doubt of guilt. Possessing stolen goods should not proof beyond a reasonable doubt of murder.

He openly admitted to multiple people he killed her and had her property in his possession. Do you think that it was impossible to have burden of proof prior to DNA or something? Who admits to killing somebody while having their property in their possession if they didn't do it? The average person would probably accept just admitting it multiple times to be beyond a reasonable doubt, but adding on the possession of the murder victim's property just pushes it further.

Re: Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence of innocence

#223

Post by tzs »

jkhdigital wrote: post #158
klyrs wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's literally the definition of hearsay. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearsay

…did you read the link you just posted? If the person whose words are being presented as evidence is available for cross-examination then (legally) it’s not hearsay. The defendant in a criminal case is always available, so any statement they make out of court is never hearsay.

That's not quite correct. An out of court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted therein is always hearsay. The exceptions given in that Wikipedia article are not exceptions to it being hearsay. They are exceptions to the rule that hearsay is not admissible.

> The defendant in a criminal case is always available, so any statement they make out of court is never hearsay.

That's also not quite correct. A declarant is considered to be unavailable for example if they refuse to testify about the subject matter despite the court ordering them to. They are also considered to be unavailable if they testify that they cannot remember the subject matter. See rule 804(a) of the Federal Rules of Evidence for the criteria for being unavailable.

(I'm using FRE because that seems to be what others are using. Really though we should be using Missouri's rules of evidence. I think most state's rules of evidence are fairly close to the FRE so that's probably reasonable).

Re: Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence of innocence

#224

Post by jasonlotito »

slibhb wrote: post #174
kelthuzad wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sentencing a man to death when there is reasonable doubt of his guilt is a miscarriage of justice. "A crime scene covered with forensic evidence contained no link to Mr. Williams. Mr. Williams has been seeking to prove his innocence throughout the 23 years he has spent on Missouri’s death row. On August 11, 1998, Felicia Gayle, a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was found stabbed to death in her home.…

It's pure speculation that the partial DNA profile recovered years after the murder came from the murderer. The police recovered the murdered woman's property from his car. How did it get there? Either it was an elaborate frame-up or a career criminal murdered a woman and stole her property. You (and The Innocence Project) apparently think that DNA must be found at the crime scene in order to convict. But is it the c…

> How did it get there?

It's explained already. That you don't know and are asking this question really means you didn't spend any time researching the case. Maybe if you were going to kill someone, you would do more research, don't you think?

Like how Missouri said it needed to do more research before killing him?

And then before the group designated to do that could render a conclusion, they were disbanded and then he was killed?

Meaning, Missouri said "We don't know enough about this and should research further, but instead of reading the results, we are just going to kill someone?"

So real the question is: why do you support the government killing someone they say they need more information on before killing them but deciding to kill them anyways?

Re: Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence of innocence

#225

Post by jasonlotito »

knodi123 wrote: post #116
atmavatar wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think the far more compelling detail is the one you overlooked: > Their statements were inconsistent with their own prior statements, with each other’s accounts, and with the crime scene evidence, and none of the information they provided could be independently verified. Not only were the two known liars, but their accounts could not be verified, and they conflict with each other as well as the existing evide…

TFA is published by The Innocence Project, which obviously only presents one side of the story. I was also using a statement from the governor, https://governor.mo.gov/press-releases/archive/state-carry-o... who makes some assertions which contradict the innocence project's.

Did they explain why they convened a board to research the topic to get to the bottom of this and then disbanded the board before they finished? Seems kind of shady when the government says "We are not sure, we need to do more research before we do this" and then never actually do that research and just kill someone?

Either you trust the government, and agree that they should have waited.

Or you don't trust the government, in which case you really can't trust them to kill someone.

So which is it?

Re: Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence of innocence

#226

Post by remarkEon »

CSMastermind wrote: post #175
diogenes_atx wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As stated in the article written by the legal scholars at the Innocence Project: > "There is no reliable evidence proving that Marcellus Williams committed the crime for which he is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 24. The State destroyed or corrupted the evidence that could conclusively prove his innocence and the available DNA and other forensic crime-scene evidence does not match him." DNA evidence is based on pr…

It's sad to me that the Innocence Project, instead of being a neutral third party investigating and then pushing back against wrongful convictions, have just become an all out 'stop the death penalty' advocacy group. Ultimately I think this undermines their cause and hurts their ability to save truly innocent people.

The Innocence Project has been like this for a while. They are not a neutral third party, they are activists. In this particular case, this man was plainly and obviously guilty of a heinous murder. They’re using weasel words and a disingenuous reading of DNA evidence to argue that there’s reasonable doubt when there is not. If their issue is with the death penalty then just argue that issue.

Re: Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence of innocence

#227

Post by BadHumans »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #126
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Democrats had cumulative decades of opportunity to instate abortion access in national law and declined to ever do so. All of the things you're pointing out are true but downstream of that.

Democrats would need a super majority to pass abortion and the last time that happened was 09.

Re: Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence of innocence

#228

Post by pie_flavor »

game_the0ry wrote: post #55

Does anyone find it deeply disturbing that the justice system will just sit on its own hands when presented with new evidence? It seems like prosecutors are more interested in maintaining a hi conviction rate rather than seeking justice. Judges seem totally apathetic.

The justice system wasn't presented with any new evidence. Some DNA from the prosecution's office ended up on the weapon sometime in the preceding 17 years, big whoop. This isn't exculpatory and doesn't contradict a single claim made by the prosecution, and there was plenty of strong evidence that he did it, such as possessing all the victim's stuff and pawning her laptop and bragging about how he did it in words that included nonpublic details about the crime.

This is the Innocence Project's standard beat. They attempt to free a lot of convicts with arguments that the media automatically takes as trustworthy because they have the word 'DNA' in them, whose conviction was based on very strong evidence and whose defense offered zero plausible explanations of the evidence, and the DNA-based argument doesn't actually contradict anything at all.

Re: Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence of innocence

#229

Post by tzs »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #130
JeremyNT wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's plenty of evidence. He confessed to his girlfriend, and a cellmate. Be careful, this is hearsay and not evidence. Those people claim that he confessed to them, but there is a lot more context. Here is what the linked story says about the "he confessed" part: > The investigation had gone cold until a jail inmate named Henry Cole, a man with a lengthy record, claimed that Mr. Williams confessed to him that he…

It's not hearsay to go to the witness stand and say the defendant told you something. That defendant is there in court and is able to defend themselves.

Correction: it is in fact hearsay but it is admissible under one of numerous exceptions to the rule that hearsay is not admissible.

Laws are generally clearer if you write them as general definitions and general rules and if those cover too much carve out exceptions in the rules rather than the definitions. It would work to make the exceptions to the definitions instead, or to both the definitions and rules, but that is usually going to be more complicated and less clear.

For hearsay the general definition is "an out of court statement offered to prove the truth of what the statement asserts" and the general rule is "hearsay is not admissible", and that is narrowed by a bunch of exceptions to the "hearsay is not admissible" rule. As far as I remember pretty much everyone has left the definition untouched.

Re: Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence of innocence

#230

Post by JKCalhoun »

nemothekid wrote: post #172
slibhb wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like pretty strong evidence to me!

It's unfortunate that a lot of the messaging has shifted to he's innocent, where I believe the right message (and far less viral message), is the government has not shown enough evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the death penalty is warranted. I don't believe in the death penalty because I don't think the state should have the authority to execute citizens and even moreso when a very high bar of culpability has…

> I'm against it because I don't think it's a power the state should be able to wield.

100% agree. We ought not grant the state the power to take our lives.

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