Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

innocenceproject.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 514 posts

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

#291

Post by tiahura »

nemo44x wrote: post #24
blcknight wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unrelated people recounted confessions he made to them that included details that were never made public Do you have a source? "The case against Mr. Williams turned on the testimony of two unreliable witnesses who were incentivized by promises of leniency in their own pending criminal cases and reward money. The investigation had gone cold until a jail inmate named Henry Cole, a man with a lengthy record, claimed t…

Literally the Missouri Supreme Court decision and US Supreme Court decision that supports it.

The same justices that put a pro-abortion amendment on the ballot.

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

#292

Post by seadan83 »

xyzzyz wrote: post #289
seadan83 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made at least two claims: " it prevented lying activists from freeing an obviously guilty" (1) activists are lying (2) obviously guilty If you cannot rebut the points made, the second claim is not supported. The article lists points that exactly put into question the guilty verdict in this case If you cannot point out the specific lies, your first claim is then also unsupported. You seem to have started in a rebu…

My claims are supported by the arguments made by the prosecution in all instances of the appellate court, the arguments that jury and the appellate courts found convincing. Even the dissenting SCOTUS justices would not argue that the guy actually is innocent. Again, can you explain to me what’s the value of me reiterating the same stuff that’s in the court documents? Do you think that activists should just be able to…

Okay, it is: "The article lists points that exactly put into question the guilty verdict in this case" vs "are supported by the arguments made by the prosecution in all instances of the appellate court"

Do you find the points raised in the article not compelling? Perhaps you could specifically address at least the point raised that the witness testimony was biased?

Still waiting for the specific lies.

The value in at least pointing out the lies is so that your claim of lies can begin to be supported - that we can see at least what you claim to be a lie. The article seems to be relatively expository. Not only would something have to be false, it would have to be knowingly so. Calling someone a liar, IMO is very significant. It should be therefore supported.

> Do you think that activists should just be able to gish-gallop everyone by forcing them to repeatedly argue the exact same points?

My opinion there is kinda immaterial. If we did go down that road, I'd have to ask you to precisely define most of those terms. Which seems like a tedious exercise, and again my 2 cents on that question seems immaterial. If you are perhaps implying I am an activist, I would not consider myself as such. I do try to practice skepticism. I also sincerely and greatly value _truth_.

So, perhaps we can start with what you claim is a lie?

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

#293

Post by WillPostForFood »

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.

There cause is to sow distrust and spread misinformation to discredit the death penalty so it will be abolished. They are doing a fair job.

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

#294

Post by lapestenoire »

I am very happy when I see The Innocence Project taking on a case like this because it tells me they have already worked through the backlog of actually innocent people as well as the people who might possibly be innocent, and now have worked there way to the cases which are 1% flawed but in which the correct perpetrator has nevertheless been identified, tried by a jury of his peers, convicted, appealed, etc.

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

#295

Post by MikeAmelung »

diogenes_atx wrote: post #267
MikeAmelung wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The next day, the police searched the Buick LeSabre and found the Post-Dispatch ruler and calculator belonging to Gayle. The police also recovered the laptop computer from Glenn Roberts. The laptop was identified as the one stolen from Gayle's residence." https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/supreme-court/2003/sc-...

The full quote from the article in justia.com states the following: "In November of 1999, University City police approached Asaro to speak with her about the murder. Asaro told the police that Williams admitted to her that he had killed Gayle. The next day, the police searched the Buick LeSabre and found the Post-Dispatch ruler and calculator belonging to Gayle. The police also recovered the laptop computer from Glen…

I was just helping everyone understand that your important clarification, was in fact, wrong.

Since I wasn't on the jury, I can't say whether or not I would have been ok with the death penalty in this case, although the murder was particularly heinous.

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

#296

Post by WillPostForFood »

seadan83 wrote: post #272
snapcaster wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we lost Roe v. Wade because the democrat party is so useless at representing our interests they failed to ever pass any law granting the right to abortion. Republicans didn't sit on their hands complacently for 40 years like democrats they followed a systematic approach to overturning it. Meanwhile the democrats did nothing except ask me for more money and continue to take L after L

Did Democrats have a filibuster proof majority since 1970? IIRC that has not been the case since at least 2000 (perhaps going back even further). Passing such a law would require a filibuster proof majority. I agree to the sentiment of uselessness, but some fairness should be payed. Congress is kinda dysfunctional with any serious legislation requiring a super majority in congress and the presidency.

Yes, twice.

95th Congress in 1977-1979 there were 61 Democrat Senators

And briefly in 2009-10 at the beginning of Obama's first term.

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

#297

Post by gibbetsandcrows »

Trill-I-Am wrote: post #274
ajross wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people would agree with that stuff in isolation, but reasonable solutions aren't really addressing the problem. Support for the Death Penalty is a political shibboleth in the modern US. It's not going to change, realistically ever, absent a major demographic realignment in the way we sort our citizens into parties. Preaching to a choir of geeks looking for "solutions" is the wrong target.

Plenty of states have banned it in the past 50 years. It's on the decline.

And some states while not having banned it outright have made it effectively impossible to carry out. Oregon IIRC had their execution chamber and death row dismantled when their last governor left office. Execution is still on the books though.

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

#298

Post by Dylan16807 »

colinb wrote: post #36
nomilk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose we lived in a world where it was possible to know someone's guilt or innocence with strictly 100% confidence. Curious to know if your views would change? Note the cost of incarceration is around ~$70k/year; enough to save lives, house people, heal people, feed people etc if put to other uses.

Here’s another thought experiment. We have ample evidence that the death penalty hasn’t made America safe from murder. But we don’t know if it has deterrence value for lesser crimes. I propose death by hanging for repeat littering and speeding near a school. I bet that’d be effective.

> We have ample evidence that the death penalty hasn’t made America safe from murder. But we don’t know if it has deterrence value for lesser crimes.

You seem to be suggesting that because murders still happen, we know the death penalty has no deterrence value? That's not how deterrence works.

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

#299

Post by sickofparadox »

RavingGoat wrote: post #82
Eumenes wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The murderer had the victims bloody jacket and some of her belongings in his car. He confessed to his partner and his prison mate that he did in fact kill her and steal her stuff. Nothing fascist about justice.

Except the DNA on the murder weapon wasn't his

He is believed by multiple crime scene investigators to have worn gloves so what does that matter?

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

#300

Post by JohnBooty »

awb wrote: post #252
nemothekid wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the government has not shown enough evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the death penalty is warranted The jury only provided the unanimous guilty verdict. After that point, the defendant has been declared guilty beyond all reasonable doubt by the state, and it's up to the judge to determine the appropriate punishment for someone guilty of the crime of 1st degree murder, robbery, etc. It's possible that some on…

Friend, this is completely the wrong math on so many levels!

I don't even know where to start... these numbers are not even remotely representative of anything about the larger prison population.

    The IP reported receiving 65,600 letters for 
    assistance, so around ~0.4% of all requests 
    for help were later proven to be wrongful convictions. 

    [...]

    Assuming the ~0.4% wrongful conviction rate is 
    representative for this population
For this to be even remotely representative of the overall wrongful conviction rate, this would mean that the IP thoroughly investigated and pursued all 65,600 cases and that new and completely fair trials were conducted in all 65,600 cases.

- The 251 exonerations were obtained by pursuing only a small fraction of those 65,600 cases. Presumably ones where they felt most certain of overturning the conviction.

- The 65,600 letter-writers are surely not representative of the overall prison population; this is a subset of convicts who have the resources to know about the IP and get a letter to them, with some kind of self-belief in their own innocence

- While apparently not true in this case the standards for death sentences tend to be higher than those for other convictions because they are so likely to be appealed, so the percentage of wrongfully convicted people on Death Row is likely to be different than that of the general convict population

- etc etc etc

I don't think your numbers are correct even as a back-of-the-envelope Fermi equation sort of estimate...

Post reply on HN